


False Stories for Broken Children

by astropixie



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Dissociation, Eating Disorders, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Family, Gen, Han Solo flashbacks, Knights of Ren (mentioned), Kylo Ren Redemption, Mental Health Issues, Mild Gore, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Past Medical Torture, Permanent Injury, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rey's family, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, This is not really a "redemption" story but a "drag Kylo away from Snoke" story, Torture, Whump, kind of dark rey, memory problems
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-30
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-30 03:48:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 48,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6407554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astropixie/pseuds/astropixie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His family had always wanted a completely different person, not him. </p><p>Grudgingly working together with Luke and Rey for a common goal, Kylo Ren would be tempted by the light if it weren't for that fact.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Ren!”

Kylo Ren, heart pounding, turned to face General Hux. He was on the bridge of the _Finalizer_. Hux and several other officers stared at him. Clearly they had been trying to get his attention for a while.

“I must see the Supreme Leader,” he said. He hoped his mask kept the words free of the panic he felt. Panic meant losing control. He lost control too much, the Supreme Leader had chided him for it. The stars always calmed him down. He looked at the stars out a viewport. It didn’t help.

Hux sneered. “You think yourself worthy of Supreme Leader Snoke’s time when you cannot even fulfill your duties during a simple planning meeting? Have you been paying any attention at all, or is professional decency against your foolish religion? We have _work_ to do, Ren.”

As usual whenever Hux spoke so plainly to him, a flutter of tension rose in the officers and bridge crew alike. They expected him to lose control and slash something, or worse, someone. Again, his lack of control was a known weakness. Under his mask, he flushed.

He turned on his heel and left the bridge, heading straight for the audience chamber.

“Supreme Leader,” he said. The hologram appeared, towering, the Supreme Leader’s scarred face unreadable as always. Snoke had always complimented Kylo Ren on his mental sensitivities, but at such a distance from Snoke’s stronghold he couldn’t glean additional information from his mind. The reverse wasn’t true. He suspected sometimes that Snoke could peer into him easily, even at great distances. “Supreme leader, I have seen a terrible vision through the Force. The Knights of Ren are in danger. I need your guidance.”

“Hmm.” Snoke leaned back in his massive projected throne. “Tell me more of what you saw.”

Kylo steadied himself, trying not to get too emotional as he recalled the horrifying vision.

_The Knight shook his head and strained against his captors, lights blinding, struggling to draw breath but eventually they forced his mouth open with foul-tasting hands, and the restraining device slipped in, gagging him and forcing a cold stream of liquid down his throat--_

“It was a Knight of Ren," Kylo said. "He had been captured. He was powerless.”

Snoke said nothing, staring down at him. Kylo waited for him to say something, to _care_ , but when this didn’t happen he went on. “I need to know where he is. I fear for him and the rest of the Knights. Will you help me?”

“No, Kylo Ren. I think this time, I will not.”

Inside the mask, Kylo’s jaw dropped. “But Supreme Leader—“

“Your failures have cost me my greatest asset, Starkiller Base. General Hux tells me you repeatedly fail to perform simple assignments. I am beginning to think the Knights of Ren have no place in my order,” Snoke said coldly.

Kylo went silent, reeling. Snoke said he was the finest student he’s ever had. Snoke had always been there for him. Where was this coming from?

Snoke went on, “I have given you training and knowledge, Kylo Ren, guided you, giving freely of myself for years, and you have repaid me poorly with your incompetence.” He finished speaking and waited, as if to see how his words would affect the Knight.

His first reaction was anger, but he couldn’t be angry at Snoke, only himself. Hot tears of frustration blinded him, and he blinked them away and unwittingly called upon an old Jedi meditation trick to cool his mind. As usual the reminder of his Uncle Luke only upset him more, and he could hardly think, could hardly see—

“I see even my additional training failed to tame your tattered mind,” Snoke said, as if he could see under the mask. Kylo’s breath hitched at the reminder of the “training.” “You must prove yourself to me before I invest even more time into you.”

 _What, killing my own father wasn’t enough for you?_ Kylo steadied his ragged breathing. “I must protect them,” he said. He was begging. “I’m sorry, Supreme Leader,” he added quickly, before Snoke could respond to his pathetic plea. “That was out of place.”

“Correct.” Snoke leaned forward. “Who do you serve?”

“The First Order.”

“From this point on your rank is no longer equal to that of the General’s. You report to him as your superior officer.” It was a dismissal and an order.

“Yes, Supreme Leader,” Kylo said, tears of impotent rage falling freely, hidden. He needed to retreat to somewhere private to wipe his face. He turned to leave.

Snoke spoke again, more gently.  “Kylo Ren.”

Kylo paused in his stride, waiting for more.

“Your sensitivity to the Force is valuable to me. But I do not trust your interpretation of your visions. Neither should you. Meditate on this. You will find you have seen incorrectly.”

If they were in the same room, Kylo might have been able to tell if it was a lie. It occurred to him that Snoke was lying. But Snoke had never lied before, so instead he had only renewed doubt in his abilities. The vision had been so clear. He had _known_ they were calling to him, crying out for help. What else could the vision mean? Was it the future? He was so sure it was happening right now—they were in trouble right now and he had to ignore it, and waste time on First Order matters with Hux…

“It is disturbing you think so little of me,” Snoke broke into his thoughts. Kylo realized he had stood motionless too long again, probably broadcasting his thoughts loudly. He kept losing time, worse and worse ever since his private “lessons” with Snoke after Starkiller was lost.

“I think little of Hux,” Kylo said.

Snoke almost smiled, and he seemed content with that reply. “He is your superior for now. We can revisit this arrangement when he reports you have performed satisfactorily.”

Kylo nodded and left.

In his quarters, he fumbled to remove his mask. It came off with a hiss and he threw it aside, wiping his eyes with the back of his hands. His grandfather’s melted helmet stared at him and he turned away from its empty judging eyes. He didn’t know if his grandfather was able to remove his mask as easily as he could. He had no business crying, even if they were tears of rage. The tears were a recent development, too, ever since that month with Snoke…he used to be more blank, controlled…

The Supreme Leader was wise. He could interpret subtleties of the Force better than Kylo. He had gone to him for advice, and he had received it. He should be grateful for the continued attention he received from Snoke.

But he had felt the hands in his mouth and liquid choking his throat as if it were happening _right now_ …

Well, why not check in on the Knights and make sure they were okay? Snoke couldn’t prevent him from doing that, right?

Masked once more, he used his private communication channel to contact their ship. They were supposed to be on another mission for the Supreme Leader. They did not answer, but that was normal.  _It’s normal that they don’t answer you. They don’t like talking to you, even though you’re technically their leader._

They were probably busy. He left a message asking for a status update. Just doing that, even though he didn’t yet know they were okay, cooled his mind.

_(“I see the wound is infected.”_

_“Supreme leader, please…”_

_“Your grandfather lost too much of his body. I will not make the same mistake with you, Kylo Ren. But you must earn this…”)_

“No!” Kylo shouted. His bed moved several feet and slammed into the nearest bulkhead. He gripped his recovering arm a moment, just a moment, and his hand went to his thick scarf, over his repaired shoulder. He had to stop losing control. Had to calm down. Refocus.

And he had to stop losing time. He had zoned out a little before Snoke’s additional training, and he didn’t think much of it (“ _day dreaming again, huh, kid?”) –no, no, NO_ —But lately it seemed to happen all the time, and he worried about his own mind.

Given that his own mind couldn’t be trusted right now, he deferred to the Supreme Leader’s judgment. He would await a response from the Knights.

 

Kylo made sure his robes and mask were all perfectly in place, and headed back to the bridge. If he was going to get back into the good graces of the Supreme Leader, he needed to at least pretend to work with Hux. He could do that. He didn’t get along with anyone, after all, not really, so he could pretend. When he wanted to.

Over the next few days he tried to be responsive to the General’s thoughts, using them to double check the meaning of his words, making sure he said the right things in meetings. Meetings and time on the bridge felt different now that he was subordinate. He had expected Hux to lord it over him but to his surprise the General took this as an opportunity to restart their rocky work relationship. It was a smart move for everyone. The crew all preferred this new arrangement.

Spending so much time observing Hux’s mind made him jealous. The General’s mind worked like a chronometer, one with perfect built-in storage for strategies, agendas, personnel files, schematics, contingencies…all put neatly in their place, coming out only when called.

He wanted that for himself but knew he probably couldn’t manage, even after endless hours of meditation. The Supreme Leader had told him his sensitivity came at a cost, which explained why he had such a hard time with his emotions and keeping calm.

Three days had passed with no word from the Knights. He sent another transmission in the morning after meditating. The Supreme Leader said his conclusion was wrong...

He stood near the glowing displays of Hux’s grand strategy for an assault on the Resistance base, ready now for an attack after regrouping. He never sat in these meetings around the table of officers. The Supreme Leader had long ago told him that etiquette dictated he stand, apart from non-Force users. He gleaned from Hux that the other man liked when he walked around, black robes dragging on the floor, a silent mystical sentry. 

“Following the aerial strike we use a third squadron to accompany a landing party, led by Lord Ren. Ren?”

Kylo wondered if he had zoned out again. “Yes, General.”

He waited a moment to hear Hux’s thoughts. _He’s like a broken doll. But there are enough men in place if he fails._

Contingency. Tick. Moving on, tock. No more thoughts from Hux about Kylo, he smoothly continued discussing the objectives for the Stormtroopers once they were on the ground.

Kylo swallowed. Hux expected him to fail. After all the listening in carefully and making sure he did everything he was supposed to, Hux thought he was broken. A doll? He just agreed to lead a ground assault on _his own mother_ and they thought he was going to fail? After what he had done on Starkiller Base? He tried to listen, tried to focus, he needed to be briefed on this part especially if he was to perform well for the General and Supreme Leader.

Hux slid a data pad to each commander in charge of different parts of the mission. He handed one to Kylo as well. He addressed everyone as he concluded the meeting. “Please read these plans over and report to me with any concerns you have with them. I will take your concerns very seriously. This will be a major victory for us. Dismissed. Ren, stay a moment.”

The officers left, barely-concealed curiosity raging. Kylo waited for them to leave, standing tall and hoping his posture betrayed nothing. He needed the General to report good things back to Snoke. He desperately grasped for information--- _unbelievable_ , Hux had rehearsed this whole upcoming conversation, and it was all strategy. Strategy to keep the compliance going.

“I want to commend you for your good behavior as of late,” Hux said. _Compliant, it has been so much easier, even if he is broken._ “I know this sudden change in our status must be difficult for you, and you have done well. I will say so in my status report to the Supreme Leader.”

“Thank you, General,” Kylo said. He flushed at the praise, but he quashed it by remembering that Hux thought he would fail. He kept calling him _broken_.

Hux looked him up and down and turned away in a dismissive gesture. “Please read the plan and let me know if you have questions or concerns. I will listen, even to you.”

It was a jibe to try to get some old personality out of him. A test? Kylo bit his lip. He didn’t want to upset him, not when something good was going in the report already. Hux waited for a response. Too many seconds passed and the opportunity to say something “in character” was gone.

“You are dismissed,” Hux said, disappointed.

Kylo left, holding the pad in shaking hands as he walked the echoing corridors. Did Hux miss their fights? Clearly, he did. He hated himself; even with the benefit of knowing precisely what other people were thinking, he still managed to screw up. Maybe he _was_ broken.

He returned to his quarters and saw the Knights still hadn't answered. Three days had passed. It wasn’t unheard of for a response to take so long, they had taken up to a month before, but within the context of his vision he grew worried.

If they cared, they would have answered.

But maybe they couldn’t answer. Maybe his vision was right.

The Supreme Leader had never lied to him. Right?

He decided to wait another day before taking rash action and charging off. Besides, he had to read the plan for attacking— _his mother—_ the Resistance. (“ _Haven’t you done enough damage already, junior?”)_

He had to stop remembering things. That was why he kept missing time. Perhaps that was even why he saw the vision at all.

_Stop caring so much about people who never cared for you._

He had Supreme Leader Snoke. He had the Knights. They cared about him. And he would go rescue them when it was clear they needed rescuing. For now, they were just acting normal. Snoke had never lied to him.

Except.

He had never been this weak. Before Starkiller, he was powerful. Emotionless, except for cool anger. In control. Now he lost time, remembered things long forgotten, making him emotional as a child. This wasn't power. And it was obvious to the General, and maybe others, that now he was broken. 

He took off his mask and shed his thick robes, shivering as the cold air hit bare skin. Wrapping himself in his standard-issue blanket, he curled up on the bed with the datapad and read in silence. The only sound was the hum of the ship.

He took his solitary evening meal, delivered by a droid (Snoke didn’t want him eating in common areas with the other officers; again, it was etiquette). The meal was bland but nutritious, something Snoke approved of.

After his meal he chewed the inside of his lip while he thought of how to phrase his ideas about the plan to General Hux. How did they know the two Jedi, Skywalker and the scavenger, wouldn’t be on the planet during the strike? They knew Skywalker had been found, but he knew—he knew something wasn’t right about the information. He couldn’t tell if it was a feeling or logic or maybe even the Force.  

He requested information from the intelligence division, hoping to put his objection to rest on his own. He didn’t want to raise an issue only for it to be easily dismissed. He had to show he was still worth something. 

A report came through an hour after he requested the information. Some of it was redacted, that was normal, but there was enough to see that in the last week, there had been a search for a missing person at the Resistance base. Now, Skywalker and his apprentice were out looking for him at some asteroid ~~that his father would have frequented.~~ In fact he had been to that trading post as a child. He remembered the hundreds of noisy hallways bored into reddish rock walls, thousands of species and voices in his head and _(“Don’t get nervous, kid, you’re with me—“_ )

— _no—focus, focus--_

The identity of the missing person was redacted, but some part of Kylo knew it was FN-2187. He thought about it some more, frowning. How did he know that so quickly? Did he have evidence? Well, it was redacted, why would anyone bother keeping that a secret if all the other relevant names were revealed? That might mean it was him.

His heart pounded like it had right after the vision. Hard, almost in his throat, making him sick. They were missing someone. He was missing someone.

The vision was real. It was real and he had wasted three days waiting on a reply that wasn’t coming.

“Please answer me,” he said aloud. His own voice scared him. It boomed into the quiet yet was softer than he was used to, without the mask on.

He wanted to talk to the Supreme Leader. But right now he couldn’t. He already tried, and got demoted, humiliated.

The only people who could understand him at all, the only people he could trust, were either willfully ignoring him or in terrible danger. He smiled, a rare thing, because that was so like them to be at one of those two extremes. If the Supreme Leader wouldn’t help him, he had to decide what to do and take action.

He put on all his layers, and packed a bag of more normal clothes. Doubting himself every second, he made his decision.

If there was even a chance the vision was real, he needed to investigate. Snoke had always said what a gift his sensitivity was. He wasn’t jumping to conclusions. There was enough evidence now that something was wrong. He could trust his own mind a little bit, if there was additional reason to.

_But there is still a chance they are just ignoring you. Why throw away your whole life for people who wouldn’t do the same for you?_

He clipped his lightsaber to his belt and walked to the shuttle bay. It was late now. The ship was quiet. He didn’t run into anyone at all until--

“Ren.”

General Hux was waiting for him at the entrance hatch to the shuttle bay. Kylo stopped, feeling like he was caught running away from home, with his bag strapped onto his back.

He was surprised to hear in his mind that Hux was amused. He assumed Hux would stop him, but that didn’t seem to be what was going on. He waited for more.

“The Supreme Leader told me to intercept you.” Hux crossed his arms. “I see he was correct that you would attempt to slip away in the night, frightened child that you are.”

“I believe my men are in danger,” Kylo said.

“Even though the Supreme Leader told you your fears were baseless? That you were being immature?” Hux glared at him.

Kylo hung his head. “I can’t explain the Force to you.”

“Please never try.” Hux held up a hand and came forward in perfect military strides. “If it will ease your mind, by all means go on. The strike is not planned for another week. Be back by then.” And he gestured with a gloved hand to the shuttle bay for Kylo to go.

Kylo stared at him. The other man’s perfectly ordered mind gave away little. “Why are you doing this?”

Hux spread his hands. “As if I could stop the Master of the Knights of Ren. You probably used a mind trick on me. Go on.” _Why would I want to hold the leash of a creature who does not require one?_

There it was. Hux feared he wasn’t—what, useful anymore? Vicious anymore? He had designs for Kylo Ren, plans, and he wanted him to be more than a yes-man. Hux wanted him to be not a broken doll but an attack dog, and lately his calm broken behavior meant he wouldn’t be as useful in the future. The chronometer ticked ahead making new, less grand plans, unless this could still be salvaged. Contingency.

Feeling slightly better now that Hux had nudged him with a gentle order— _allowing some slack in the leash-_ -although unsettled by glimpse of what he might call Hux’s fantasies, he entered the shuttle bay without second-guessing himself. He needed the approval of what he was doing. He might not have followed through on his midnight escape without it. He felt hollow, that he needed someone else to help him so badly before he could do anything on his own. Why was he like that? Had he always been like that?

He selected a ship less ostentatious than his usual command shuttle. It was an unmarked freighter meant for undercover work. First he entered the only destination he had a lead on into the navicomputer, that cheesy asteroid, and then he ran a preflight. ~~His father~~ told him to always do a preflight check, unless there wasn’t time. ~~Chewie~~ had pointed out that there was always time unless someone had created a situation in which there wasn’t. (“ _Come on, you’re making the old man sound like a bad pilot—“)_

Could he not even do a simple task like pilot a small craft without falling apart? To his horror he was walking around doing checks on the hyperdrive while trying not to cry behind his mask again.

_They left you. They left you and didn’t care. They were afraid of you and they sent you away._

Emboldened by the rush of anger, he finished the preflight and sat in the pilot’s seat. With renewed confidence he flipped the power switches and repulsorlifts and lifted off from the docking bay smoothly ~~enough to make even Han Solo proud~~. The bay doors opened without his asking for permission—likely thanks to Hux.

Once out of the _Finalizer_ and in the freedom of space he took off his mask and patted his eyes free of any wetness. The stars always used to calm him down.

He input the coordinates from the navicomputer and the relative feeling of calm evaporated. He was heading to a den of smugglers, right for the girl who nearly killed him and his uncle who hated him. He needed to stay calm, make a plan, think of why they would be heading to this place, think of how to control the situation if he ran into them. He had a lot of planning to do. He was also very, very tired from a long day of planning something else—the strike on his mother’s base.

_Why do you keep thinking of it as your mother’s base instead of the Resistance base? Why do you run to aid people who might simply be ignoring you while you plan to finish the destruction of your family?_

_Cognitive dissonance, I guess._

It would take several hours to arrive in the system. He decided to try planning lying down in the small crew quarters. What really happened was he fell asleep and didn’t wake up until the ship’s alarm told him he needed to take the ship out of hyperspace. He banged his head on the unfamiliar, too-small cot and lurched his way to the cockpit, dreading the approach to the asteroid because he remembered this. His ~~dad~~ always approached places like this with a smirk on his face, enjoying the moderate difficulty of a congested area. Kylo almost never got to (had to?) practice this.

_Well, maybe it’s for the best if you crash and die._

_(“Haven’t you done enough damage already, junior?”)_

He would be fine. He could do this. He communicated his approach to the landing authorities and secured a docking bay on the edge of the settlement, near the central part of the asteroid, a hollowed out spiral of sleaziness. He only used the Force once (a prickling at the back of his neck saying DODGE NOW) during the approach. He felt okay about that, as he set the ship down. _(“That’s cheating, you can’t just use the Force to make up for not watching where you’re going—“_ )

He changed into his nondescript clothes, simple brown slacks, a clean shirt, a plain black jacket. He hesitated, then reached for the other scarf, not his usual one. His usual one, huge, tattered and black, was probably too recognizable. This green one would do. It was soft, that was different but nice. He wrapped it around his shoulders and once over his head, creating a hood. He could hide himself reasonably well through the Force but if Rey saw his face… he didn’t have a plan yet. His new scar would likely garner unwanted attention from strangers, too.

He knew the only reason to come here would be the information brokers. His ~~dad~~ often came here for those services. Is that why Skywalker came here? For more information? Or would their missing person be here?

He psyched himself up to actually leave the ship. After a long internal debate he decided to take a blaster, strapped safely into a holster at his belt, with his lightsaber concealed in his boot. He wouldn’t be able to reach it quickly if he needed it, but it was there, comforting.

He barely stepped out of the hatch and into the recycled artificial air of the asteroid when he sensed Rey, in trouble. Self-doubt hit him ( _how do you know for sure it’s her? You barely know her, she hates you, why would you sense her so easily?_ ) but he reached out purposefully to confirm. He secured his ship, closing the hatch, and jogged a few steps out of the hangar.

It was almost exactly the same hellhole he remembered from his childhood. He winced, thinking about bringing a child to such a place. It was massive, the hollowed-out shell of a large asteroid turned into a trading outpost. It was a spiral, each level gently sloping down into the next, with a metal railing bolted into the rock all the way down to a busy ground. Garish red lights lured lonely spacers to bars of dancing girls on every level, music boomed from several clubs, and every filthy business carved into the moldy rock was a front for an even worse business in the back. He sensed a lot of people in trouble. Mostly money trouble, stress, failing businesses and hopelessly underwater obligations. He knew all those troubles, from a long time ago.

He pondered more specifically on Rey, and there she was, several hundred feet below him. He actually could see her. He was a little surprised; he thought maybe he’d imagined her presence. He stood on a higher level overlooking much of the outpost, she was four levels down, being followed by someone. Well, he knew firsthand she could handle someone following her. But as he watched he realized she didn’t know about it.

Where was Skywalker? He should be watching out for Rey, not Kylo. Unless he wasn’t there at all, and the First Order intelligence was either wrong or edited to be wrong for him. But that didn’t make sense, if they didn’t want him to know something his request for information would be full of redacted parts or outright rejected, they had never edited documents to such an extent before. Besides, it would be cruel to send the lonely girl from the desert by herself to a place like this. Skywalker would be here, somewhere. Lurking, just like him.

He went down the curved spiral of the asteroid, looking over the side of the railing every so often to keep Rey in sight. It occurred to him that now she was being followed by two creepy people. He adjusted his hood.

He was on the same level as Rey now. He kept to the doorway of a loud club, hood and hair covering much of his face, using the Force to make himself uninteresting, hidden in plain sight. Probably the first thing he had taught himself to do. He used a special visualization, remembering a party when he was very small and should have been in bed, when he was done socializing with the senators and just wanted to disappear. Sometimes the visual was too old, too overdone in his head and he needed to think hard about it but right now it was working fine for him, and no one said anything about the man who hovered by the club door.

Rey was waiting for someone. Typical. She stood patiently at the railing, twenty feet away from where he stood, watching the people on the main floor with interest. There was a café with fake trees at the bottom that she wanted to go see—she liked the green. She was overwhelmed by the activity, lights, and smells.

Kylo saw what was following her then; a large droid, boxy and unimpressive, but it had a scanner, and a syringe. He didn’t like the look of it. While it was still a good distance off, he took out his blaster and shot it.

Hardly anyone even noticed, the clubs and conversations were so loud, except a passing Chadra-Fan with enormous ears. She merely gave him a stern look and then finished her purchase at the vegetable stand next to the club (the stand was also a secret loan office). Kylo brushed her mind quickly to be sure she wouldn’t tell anyone, but she like almost everyone was busy and had already forgotten the incident.

 He stiffened. His uncle was near. He crept further into the shadows as he watched him approach, seeming to part the crowd. He wore his Jedi robes, his face covered except for a very grey beard poking out from under the cowl. Every nerve in his body was singing _to run, run, run, he will kill you, why are you standing here?_ But that droid was right there and he had a feeling it meant something, and now he was too scared to move—

“Are you _sure_ this is the place?” Skywalker said, and Kylo could have laughed if he wasn’t so scared. He remembered his ~~dad~~ going on about what a _whiny farmboy_ his brother-in-law was, and even now that he was a terrifying ancient Jedi master, Kylo could hear the whine in his voice. At some point, he had forgotten that about him. He only remembered the fear and anger. 

“This is what I saw,” Rey said firmly. She looked around; Kylo swallowed, but her eyes passed over him. “I guess I was hoping Finn would be here, but he isn’t. But this is the place I saw. Something is here.”

A high-pitched squeal of a droid startled Kylo from his eavesdropping, and he backed away, hitting the wall behind him hard as R2-D2 rolled straight up to him.

“Go away!” he hissed at the droid, but Artoo was already shouting for attention, and bumping into his foot over and over again.

He looked up. Luke and Rey both looked squarely at him. Her eyes narrowed.

Her lightsaber ignited. She charged.

“No, Rey, no!” Luke shouted, and ran after her.

Kylo took off, dodging to the side, right into the stall selling vegetables (“Hey! My cabbages!”), and jumped off of the cart to vault over the railing. Still three levels up from the ground floor.

Rey swiped viciously at him, stopped by the railing, but he fell downward out of her reach. He centered himself in the Force as he landed, grunting on impact and taking off into a run.

Stupid. Stupid, why did he go out of his way to protect the scavenger girl? She didn’t need his help and wanted him dead. She had thoroughly rejected him, ruined everything at Starkiller, nearly cost him his arm (and almost his life), why did he still have _compassion_ for her?

He pushed through the crowd, but it was thick, he couldn’t get very far—and she was right behind him! She made the jump, he didn’t know she would be able to do that. People were screaming and falling over as he plowed through, chased by a girl with a lightsaber and death in her eyes.

This was drawing too much attention, she might hurt someone, this was not useful, and he probably couldn’t get away from her without turning around and facing her. He whirled, and used the Force to freeze her, just like the first time in the forest, when she was shooting at him. She vibrated with rage in place, fighting him, but he was stronger. For now. People had cleared out to get away from the lightsaber, he needed to slip away into the crowd somehow while he could get away--

“Ben!”

Skywalker approached, getting in between him and Rey. Hot, years-old anger rose in him at the sound of his uncle saying that name.

“You don’t get to call me that!” he roared, fear forgotten. “You call me Ren.”

He had lost his scarf in the chase. He reached up to touch his neck and didn’t feel the soft texture there. He gripped the lapel of his jacket instead.

“You monster, let me go!” Rey shouted.

He did, and he ran. He heard Skywalker tell her to let him go. Like a caged animal they were releasing back into the wild, too vicious to keep chained. Well. Hux would be happy.

He took a long route, through an old shop he remembered, although now it sold what appeared to be outfits for male and female club workers and not novelty candles (some childish part of him missed the smell even as he ran). He made his way back to his hangar to escape. It was only a matter of time before they figured out which ship was his and they would follow him or have a plan this time to kill him. They weren’t expecting him and now they knew he was there, so they would kill him.

Why did he keep wanting to help her? It was her fault Snoke had subjected him to torturous training. He should want nothing to do with her. Clearly, the training hadn’t even cured him of his foolishness regarding the scavenger. Everything was ruined now. He had no leads. He should just go back to the _Finalizer_.

_This always happens to you, doesn’t it? You care about people who will never care about you in return. You’re a dark thing no one cares for, but with too much light._

Sure now he wasn’t being immediately followed, he slowed and took a moment to think. He couldn’t go back yet. He had one clue for all this, that droid with the syringe. It was still on the third level, motionless. He had to see if it had any information.

Still sure no one was following him, he went back to that spot outside of the club. The vendor now had a half-off sale on fruit. Kylo bought some while he looked at the droid. He couldn’t glean anything just by looking at it. He would need to take it back to his ship, maybe fix it up or take it apart if it wouldn’t talk to him.

“Ben.”

Kylo jumped, and backed away. His uncle had snuck up on him. He tensed, expecting a blow—

But there wasn’t any blind anger and hatred like he remembered. Luke looked calm on the exterior but his mind raced. _Han_ , _Leia, I found him. I’ll bring him home_. He held out the green scarf Kylo had lost.

“I told Rey to calm down with a nice drink downstairs,” Luke said, still holding the scarf out to him. He lowered his hood. “I don’t want to fight, just talk.”

Kylo looked at the scarf. He really wanted it back. He tried to get more thoughts from Luke. The Jedi Master believed that meeting Kylo here was the point of Rey’s vision. They were supposed to reconcile here. That he could bring Leia’s son home and rescue Finn.

“But you hate me,” Kylo said. He was still ready to run.

The air itself cringed. His uncle’s presence in the Force was oppressive, heavy. Luke shook his head. “That’s not true. I know what you did—“

Kylo flinched and moved to run—

“But I know you’re conflicted about it.” _I feel the conflict in you. It’s not too late._ “You’re in pain, anyone can see it.”

Luke was acting like he cared. But he couldn’t. He left them all to die, let them fend for themselves. He thought his nephew was going to become Vader and was always so afraid of him, hated him—

“Ben?” Luke asked, acting concerned.

Kylo blinked and moved another step back. He lost time again? Here? With someone who had many reasons to kill him, some of them even good?

“What’s happened to you?” Luke asked. He looked very old.

Kylo didn’t answer. Two men, human, appeared to collect the droid. He drew his blaster.

Luke’s lightsaber appeared in hand. Off, but ready. Kylo eyed it. So much for pretending to care. His scarf was forgotten, on the ground. Kylo stalked over to the men, blaster ready, ignoring Luke as best he could. So Luke was still afraid of him. Good. He should be.

“Who do you work for? What is this droid?” he demanded.

They ignored him and hoisted it up together. It looked funny when they walked with the droid between them; one of the men was shorter than the other. They were having a heated conversation about a holo drama they had watched recently. The shorter man, the captain of the ship, had a heavy accent.

“Oh, but that’s the thing, mate, she didn’t know she loved ‘im until he was dead and gone, just like my ex-wife—“

“Cap’n, I sure hope you’re makin’ bad jokes again.”

Kylo reached out with a gloved hand and froze them in place.

“Ben, please don’t—“

He pushed his uncle backward with the Force and moved to stand in front of the captain, who paid him attention now, with huge wide eyes. “I will get the information.”

“Ben, that’s enough!” Luke overpowered him and released the men, who quickly picked up the boxy droid and hustled away. “You can’t just—“

“That droid wanted Rey!” Kylo shouted at him. The men were getting away in the bustle of the asteroid. “They might know something!”

He could see Luke didn’t believe him. Same as always. Luke never believed him, and it _hurt._ It shouldn’t hurt anymore but it did.

“Okay,” Luke said, shaking his head. _If it means a chance to talk with him I’ll go along._ “Let’s find out more. But you can’t just jump to conclusions like this, or use the Force to frighten people—“

“I’m not a little kid!” He jogged after the men. This was worse than being with his parents. Being struck down by a lightsaber would have been preferable.

Luke picked up the scarf and followed him.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” Luke asked. “Have you left the First Order?”

Kylo walked faster. “You wouldn’t care.”

The old man could keep up perfectly well with the faster pace. “Ben, that’s not true. I can help you.”

“Stop calling me that.”

“Is it--” _my students?_ ”—is it the others? They’re missing too?” Luke asked, looking up at him. He didn’t remember being taller than Master Skywalker.

Kylo nodded tightly.

Luke went quiet, but his mind practically shouted, _This is good, he cares about them very much. We have common ground. Will they listen to me? Do they listen to Ben? I hope they treat him better than they used to._

Kylo blinked. What did that mean?

Luke’s comlink beeped. They were in the middle levels, near another set of hangar bays. “Luke, are you okay?” It was Rey.

Luke responded, “We’re fine. We might have a lead on Finn.”

“He hasn’t killed you in cold blood?”

“Not yet,” Kylo muttered.

He heard a smile in Luke’s voice as he responded. “I think we’re going to be okay.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Emotional abuse can lead to not trusting your own perception of people and events. Abusers try to isolate you and control your behavior. http://www.helpguide.org/articles/abuse/domestic-violence-and-abuse.htm#emotional
> 
> It's not a perfect fit but I view Snoke and Kylo's dynamic as abuse between narcissist and empath, and this will come up more later in the story: http://www.elephantjournal.com/2015/10/understanding-the-language-of-narcissistic-abuse/


	2. Chapter 2

Kylo and Luke reached a hangar, cavernous and full of people hurrying to complete mildly illegal jobs. The men they were following worked quickly, trying to get the droid onboard a sizeable cargo ship. It was shaped like three eggs in a line, with most of the ship devoted to cargo space and a tiny cockpit in the front. Luke caught his eye. “Stay here. I’ll see what I can find out.”

Kylo nodded, resentment burning. That was _his_ special ability. Luke could barely feel emotions with the Force, while Kylo had always been able to hear whole thoughts. How was Luke going to get the information? He struck out at the men by making the droid very, very heavy all of a sudden, and they puzzled over what it could be stuck on. His uncle gave him a knowing, exasperated look. Kylo scowled and looked away.

Luke talked with them, apologizing for his nephew’s behavior, and offered to pay them for their trouble. He wasn’t bothering to ask real questions! Kylo concentrated, passively listening, but they were worried about shipping schedules, getting paid, nothing really specific. Their employer, the information he really needed, was right there but needed a push. It was always harder to rip information from people’s heads but this was his only chance. He reached out—

“And my young friend would like to apologize,” Luke said, appearing out of nowhere, grabbing his outstretched arm and dragging him over to the men.

For a few white-hot seconds Kylo couldn’t think. Couldn’t move. Too much—Snoke was the last person to touch him--

“Don’t touch me!” Kylo shouted. Angry tears threatened to fall. He wished he could have said something as soon as it had happened, it was too late now, seconds had passed, and everyone was thinking that he was crazy. Luke dropped his arm, but he didn’t feel bad about touching him, just embarrassed that he had a nephew with lasers for brains, and angry. The men wanted to get back, get back to—Dathomir? Yes, there were more Force-users there, and these Force-users were too much trouble for their employer—

“Who is your employer?” Kylo demanded. The air crackled around them with his anger, barely restrained.

“You keep your money, we’re out of here,” the shorter one said, and Kylo threw the droid at the nearest bulkhead with a _shove_. It shattered, chunks of metal casing and circuitry raining down around them. The men ran into their ship and Kylo wanted to throw that into the wall, too, he reached out, the ship shuddered—

“Ben!” Luke shouted, pushing his hand down, and this time Kylo flinched away and ran. “Ben, please, calm down! Wait, no, stay, we can talk this out! We’ll find them by working together—“

No, no…it was nice and all that his uncle didn’t want to kill him but he worked alone. He had always been alone and was far better off that way. He ran at a full sprint, running back to his ship—

Sharp pain exploded in his jaw. He stumbled backward, blaster drawn in reflex. Rey appeared from the shadows of a dimly-lit shop, where she had been waiting to club him in the face with her staff. He pushed her away but she barely stumbled back, ready for him. He didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t get past, couldn’t fight her with Luke right behind him—

Artoo wheeled up to him. “Artoo, stay back!” Rey shouted, turning the lightsaber on.

Artoo ignored her and bumped into his foot. The droid beeped quietly at him. He holstered the blaster. There had been a few times, when his uncle would visit, and Kylo didn’t like being around him because he was so afraid of him, how quiet and strange he was, but Artoo liked him. Artoo was the only good part of his uncle’s visits. He would sit with Artoo and show him the project he was working on for his tutor droid, usually some mechanical apparatus, and Artoo would beep and tell him stories that he only understood a little of. He sat down, knees pulled into his chest, and Artoo stayed still against his leg.

Rey stared down at them. _I can’t kill him now_ , she thought, and he could feel her disappointment, like the gradual slowing down at the end of an exciting speeder ride.

“Rey! Rey, stop.” Luke finally caught up to him. “He was right about that droid and those men. Ben, tell her. You saved her.”

Artoo leaned forward, crooning softly, and Kylo touched his domed head like he used to. He gently traced the blue rectangles against the silver metal with a single finger.

“He didn’t save me, he was spying on me!” Rey said, but she turned the lightsaber off.

Luke crouched next to him and Artoo. _I’m in over my head. I could never help him, and now I feel there is really something wrong. I failed him so badly._

Kylo looked up at him. “Yes.”

Luke hung his head, confused and hurt.

He might have been a visibly _broken doll_ onboard the _Finalizer_ in recent weeks but being around his uncle again completely destroyed him. He had to carry on by himself, and even though Luke had prevented him from getting a specific name, he knew a location, and even the specific port on Dathomir. He would follow them and get what he needed. He stood up, slowly, so Rey wouldn’t attack him again. She was always attacking him.

Luke stood too. _I’m losing him. Ben, help me, what do I do?_

Kylo looked at him at the sound of his old name but flushed when he realized he was talking to a ghost, not him.

“Did you really help me?” Rey asked.

“I need to go,” Kylo said.

Luke held out the broken scanner from the droid. He must have stayed behind to look at the wreckage before following him. “Please, just…That droid was modified to sedate and capture someone, holding them in its body and delivering them to those men. And it had equipment to detect people who can use the Force.” Luke handed the scanner to Rey, who looked at it with a scavenger’s expertise. “Ben realized all that and that’s why he was watching you. He stopped the droid before it got too close. He’s not here to hurt us at all.”

Rey moved to hand the device back to Luke, passing too close to Kylo. He flinched. Rey stopped, watchful.

Luke went on, “Rey, your vision led us here. Isn’t it possible we’re supposed to work together? We’re all looking for missing people. They can all use the Force, and they’ve been targeted and captured. Something very bad is going on and we need to work together to stop it.” _We’re all targets. I need to keep Ben and Rey safe_.

Everyone was quiet. Kylo said, “We’re not.”

Luke watched him. Confused. _A Jedi must have patience._ “We’re not what, Ben?”

“Targets.”

“How do you know that?”

“They were thinking it. We’re too much trouble. They want easy targets.”

“Finn is not an easy target,” Rey said.

“I would hardly call the Knights of Ren easy targets, either,” Luke said mildly, although Kylo could feel that saying those words out loud felt like self-inflicting wounds.

“You never wanted to help us,” Kylo said. “You still don’t. You just want the traitor. If we find them all, you will help him first. I will be left to save everyone. Like always.”

 _He’s talking, I have to keep him talking,_ Luke was thinking, but this conversation was so painful to him that he couldn’t think of the right words to keep it going. _He’s right. I failed them all so badly._

“I will find my own.” Kylo walked past Rey, who let him. He hesitated, then said, “If I find FN-2187, I will help him.”

“What, help him straight back to the First Order?” Rey said, in his face again. She looked to Luke. “He can’t find him first! Luke, we have to stop him!”

“The First Order is better than what’s happening to him now,” Kylo snapped, then wished he hadn’t.

Rey blocked him leaving. “You know what’s happening to him? Tell me!”

But he didn’t want to, he wasn’t even sure of what he saw, the Supreme Leader had said it was wrong, but here he was with all this evidence—missing people, droids built for abducting Force users, the scanner for detecting Force sensitivity right in Rey’s hands in front of him.

“I had a vision,” he said stiffly. He didn’t say more.

Rey took a deep breath, watching him. Rey wasn’t afraid of him at all. She was like Hux that way. Only instead of having plans to use him, she thought _he_ had that kind of plan for _her_. She thought that was why he offered to teach her, why he saved her from the droid just now. She wished she had done more than strike his face in the snowy woods. She would be thrilled to know how much she had really done.

He walked away. He got about twenty feet away in the shadowed corridor when Artoo wailed, a pathetic, sad noise that wrenched him. He stopped. Turned around.

“Artoo, don’t make me do this,” he said.

The droid rocked in place, beeping angrily.

“They hate me!” he said, waving toward Luke and Rey.

Whiiiirrrr-borp. The droid didn’t think so.

“Yes, I do,” Rey interjected. Artoo bleated at her, and Luke covered his face with a hand. She sighed. “But I don’t think you mean us any harm, and I trust the Force. It was you in my vision. We’re going to find Finn, together. You’re going to help us.”

_Skywalker abandoned you, the girl ruined your face and arm, are you really going to work with them? Because a droid is asking you to?_

He walked back to them, slowly. Rey still thought of him as a hulking creature in the forest, tame for now but at some point he would need to be put down. “I have a location. From the captain.” He scowled. “I could have had a name.”

Rey frowned at Luke. “Did you stop him from learning something?”

Luke’s despair and pain swirled around him, through the Force, and Kylo wished he had his scarf to hold onto. “We can’t turn to the Dark side for answers.”

“It’s not the Dark side.” Kylo wished he was still small enough to lean on Artoo for support. The astromech droid seemed so tiny now. “It’s—“ _Me. It’s just me. If I am the Dark side, then yes, it is the Dark side._

Rey looked between them, then said, “I want my friend back. I don’t care what we need to do. If we’re going to align ourselves with the worst sort of creature, let us at least be honest that we need him, and let him do the only thing he’s good for.”

Kylo stared at the ground. Artoo whirred quietly.

Rey started walking. “Come on, let’s go. What is the location?”

He followed her, Artoo close behind him, with Luke in back, a silent robed presence radiating confusion. He wasn’t in control of the situation, of these children, not even of his own droid. _How can I lecture Rey when so far Ben is the only one who has made progress finding her friend? How can I keep Ben from losing control again?_

They reached the hangar with the _Millennium Falcon_ in it. Kylo didn’t need to see the ship to know it was in there. It had a presence in the Force like a living thing, to him, at least. A thing both living and dead.

“No,” he said. He stopped.

“What now?” Rey asked.

“I will take my own ship. We will rendezvous on Dathomir.”

“That’s not acceptable. You could slip off and lose us,” Rey said. She gestured with the lightsaber to make him follow her. “Come on, creature.”

Luke tutted. “Can we at least be civil?”

“I prefer that name to what you call me,” Kylo said. Then, “One of you can come with me in my ship. I won’t go on that one.”

A young woman approached them. She reminded Kylo strongly of Poe Dameron. A pilot. She looked between them all and said, “Any luck? Who’s tall, dark and handsome?”

“Definitely not worth your time,” Rey said, rolling her eyes.

“Jessika, this is my nephew, Ben,” Luke said, and her eyes went wide.

“Ohhhh. Oh. Ah.” Jessika had been about to offer her hand in greeting but she took it back. “And he’s here….” _and we’re not running and screaming why?_

“He’s helping us find Finn,” Rey said firmly. “He won’t hurt any of us.” _And if he does, I will end him._

Kylo didn’t know why they needed three competent pilots to fly the _Falcon_. It seemed like overkill. He reached out and didn’t sense his ~~uncle Chewie~~. He almost asked why but he couldn’t form the words.

Luke was considering who should go with Kylo. He understood that the _Falcon_ was a poor choice of ship, it had been all along for this mission, and Kylo would need the security of being able to leave if this was going to work _. I can save him_ , he was thinking. They needed the two ships.

“I’ll take Artoo with me,” Kylo suggested.

Artoo agreed, and wheeled over to him. Something deep within him thawed when the little droid trundled next to him, rocking contentedly.

“Artoo, it’s too dangerous,” Luke said. _But who goes with, Rey or me? I keep setting him off, but Rey might kill him._

Artoo seemed to spit in derision that he could ever be in danger.

“Artoo, if you go alone you’ll end up being parts for the next Death Star or Starkiller Base,” Rey said harshly. “Fine. I’ll go with you.”

“Rey—“

“I can handle myself!” she said.

Luke stared at her. Words came to mind that weren’t exactly his own. _Much darkness in her. Reckless. Like her father._

“Why are we splitting up?” Jessika asked.

“Because he’s a stubborn child,” Rey said.

“Because I don’t trust you,” Kylo said.

“Okay, okay, just, let’s stop fighting. How about you all go together, you can keep tall and dark in check,” Jessika suggested. “I can fly the _Falcon_ just fine on my own. We’ll meet up, okay?”

This was far from ideal, but it meant Kylo still had a ship of his own. Although it was much smaller than the _Falcon_ , and he wouldn’t be able to spend any time apart from them. It should just be a day’s journey. He could do this. Especially if he had Artoo with him. Just like when he had to put up with his uncle’s visits, when Luke’s fear was too much, he could retreat into a quiet world with the only person who seemed to like him, the little droid. He agreed with a nod.

“Oh, but I’ll need Artoo in case something breaks,” Jessika added. “Something is probably going to break, it’s the _Falcon_.”

“How surprising.” Kylo turned and left for his ship, barely caring what the plan even was anymore. He needed to catch up to those men before they left for another destination and he had no more leads.

“Sorry about this,” Rey told Jessika. “He can find Finn for us, we need him.”

“Head for Dathomir, but go to the rendezvous if we don’t meet up in two days,” Luke said.

“This is wild, fill me in over the comms, okay?” Jessika called after them.

The two Jedi jogged after him. He hadn’t sprinted off to lose them like he sort of wanted to, but he kept up a good pace and they trailed with some space, so they could talk in private. He overheard almost all of it.

“You have to be nicer to him.”

“Nice? He’s a _murderer_.”

“You don’t understand. I don’t understand everything yet. But he can come back to our side, I know it. Something has changed in him. But we have to start by being a side worth joining. I—I think that was why we lost him in the first place.”

“Please excuse me if I don’t see how growing up with a loving family was reason to go to the Dark side.” _I would give anything to have what he stabbed through the heart for no reason_. “Jessika’s calling.”

They were finally to the level with his ship. Rey kept talking, he could hear her half of the conversation. “Jess. No, we’re not under a Jedi mind trick, we _are_ Jedi. Everything is fine. He can get information from people really easily, that’s how we have another lead. It looks like Finn was captured by some people who are collecting people with the Force. No, it seems bad.”

Kylo turned to face them as they walked up to the ship. He started his preflight. “Does she want the coordinates for when we get to the planet?” Kylo asked, and Luke and Rey looked at him in shock. They didn’t think he could hear them, they should have been far enough away. Rey felt guilty for a moment but quickly pushed it aside with fresh anger at his inability to mind his own business. Luke’s guilt weighed heavily around them like a lead cape sewn into the Force itself.

Rey handed him the comm, and he rattled off the coordinates he gleaned from the man’s mind. “Got it, tall and dark,” Jessika said. “I know that port, actually. Nice bar there, you wouldn’t expect it. Give me back to Rey, okay? Thanks.”

He handed it back to her, a little shaken by the nickname. It was his favorite of the day, between “ ~~Ben~~ ,” “Creature,” and “tall and dark.” Rey glared at him while she listened to Jessika for a few more seconds. Then she said, “We’ll see you there, yeah?”

He ignored the glare and kept checking the engines, and out of paranoia checked for any tracking devices. He didn’t see or sense anything. He moved onto the interior and tried to ignore his uncle and the girl following him like watchful, vengeful ghosts from his past. He could barely concentrate as he checked the hyperdrive.

 _Jessika is only being nice to you because she is the nicest person in the galaxy_ , Rey was thinking. She wanted to say something to make sure he had no intentions about her friend, but also didn’t want to actively ignore what Luke had told her.

 _Cute pilots are the downfall of us all_ , Luke was thinking. _Maybe Ben will respond to Jessika, if he’s not responding to me or Rey_.

“Stop,” Kylo said, swallowing hard. “I can’t concentrate.”

“We’re just standing here,” Rey said. She crossed her arms.

“I hear it all.” Kylo pointed to his head. “You’re both—loud.”

“Then stay out of our heads,” Rey said, frantic. _He’s doing it again, taking what he wants—not thinking about anyone else--_

“Come on, Rey,” Luke said. “We’ll try to stay out of your way. Is there anything we can do to help?”

His uncle’s plan was to kill him with kindness. It would never work. The betrayal was too deep. Being polite and kind now wasn’t going to make up for abandoning his students and leaving them to fend for themselves, watching all their friends die, the smell of smoke thick as some of them died right there in their beds, locked in their rooms as the temple burned, and ~~Ben Solo~~ took up the ancient blade, he could protect them—

“Ben?”

Oh, no. More lost time? He started, and shoved past them both to go to the cockpit, alone.

“What’s wrong with him?” Rey hissed. “Is he crazy?”

“I don’t know. He zoned out earlier alone with me, too. There’s something wrong.”

He didn’t know if he could do this. It was a perfect time machine. It was his uncle and his mother talking in hushed voices all over again, wondering what was wrong with him, why he didn’t get along with anyone his age, whether going to the Jedi temple would be any better, then wondering why the other padawans didn’t like him, and his uncle Luke was so _overwhelmed_ because he was _too much_. It was unfair to expect a farm boy with no experience to fix his sister’s troubled son. (“ _He doesn’t need Jedi training, he needs therapy—“_

_“What, you’re saying my son is crazy? You’re one to talk, junior, I’m not the one who has delusions of grandeur--”)_

The console beeped. Kylo stared, mind torn between horrible memories and understanding who was calling him now. It had to be either Hux or Snoke. Fully alert after his sad trance, he rushed to the engine room where Rey and Luke were still talking.

“I must give a report to the First Order,” he said. “Be quiet.”

To his surprise, Rey didn’t shout, and Luke just nodded. He ran back to the cockpit and answered the call.

A little hologram of General Hux appeared. “Lord Ren. Do you have a status report for me?”

“I have a lead, General,” he said. He could tell Rey was listening in, but out of sight, quiet. “And a better idea of what happened. I will require the full week.”

“What is your assessment of our earlier conversation, Ren? Right before you left?”

Hux was speaking very guardedly. Kylo knew why; he was asking about whether the Supreme Leader had lied to him about the safety of the Knights. He realized that meant Snoke will have lied to them both. As private as this channel was, it was not impervious to outside hacking, especially from Snoke. “I was right.”

The little Hux adjusted his greatcoat. “Interesting. You have good instincts. The First Order should use them more often.”

“Thank you, sir,” Kylo said, astonished. He flushed a little. He couldn’t recall another time someone had said that.  

Hux smirked. “Carry on with your mission, Lord Ren. We will see you at the rendezvous.”

“Yes, sir.”

The communication ended. But it felt like Hux was still in the cockpit with him. Kylo was so nervous about the possibility that Hux could somehow still hear them that he actually disconnected the power from the communication array before he felt safe again. He leaned back, multitool twirling in hand.

Rey watched him, and sat in the co-pilot seat. “You didn’t tell him about us.”

Kylo didn’t answer. He finished the preflight (“ _What’s taking so long, kid, it’s not like we’re in a hurry to get **out of here** or anything—“)_ and tried to contact the station controller for permission to take off. It didn’t work. He flicked the switch a few times but it didn’t turn on the comm.

Rey gave him a strange look and held out her hand. He looked at it, confused, until he realized he was still holding the multitool to disconnect the power from the system he was trying to use. He blinked away sudden irrational tears of frustration, hiding his face and handing it to her.

Rey reconnected the system with ease, and he informed the station controller that he was taking off. He sat back and waited for clearance, refusing to look anywhere near her.

_He’s crazy. How does Luke think he’s going to save a crazy person?_

He wanted to object, say he wasn’t crazy, but then she would scream at him again to stay out of her head. He bit his lip and pretended not to hear. That was always easiest. He could block them with the Force but that required a lot of concentration. Right now he had to concentrate on flying.

Clearance from the controller came, and he piloted them out, ignoring Rey’s silent and somewhat well-founded fears that he didn’t have the mental capacity to keep them from crashing. He could do this. Taking off was much easier than landing. He noticed that Rey was ready to use the co-pilot controls just in case.

Luke joined them in the tiny cockpit, going back on his promise to stay out of the way (since when did he keep promises to Kylo?) even though there was no room for a third person. He stood by, that heavy weight he carried thick in the room, making it hard to breathe. That was bad enough, but then: _He looks like Han when he flies._

Kylo gasped, scaring Rey, making her look around for a threat. He glared up at his uncle, who had no idea— _what did I do now?_

He’d had fifteen years to figure his nephew out, before Kylo left, and for five of them they had seen each other almost every day. And he still couldn’t understand why Kylo might possibly be upset right now. Didn’t seem to care that Kylo’s ability wasn’t some Dark, unnatural thing that he could just disconnect from if he were normal. He had tried explaining it before, that Luke had it backwards, that actually he had to concentrate _not_ to hear things, not _to_ hear things, he didn’t do it on _purpose_ , but that only got him in trouble. Luke might be trying to _be nicer to him_ but nothing had changed. Luke thought he could turn him to the Light side but he still didn’t realize that he meant to fundamentally change who he was if he did that. His family had always wanted a completely different person, not him.

He refocused. He still had to get them out of the asteroid’s busy traffic. He realized he had forgotten to input the coordinates to the navicomputer before taking off. _(“Great, kid, just great. Now we have to wait instead of it just being ready for us.” Bang! “It’s not like someone is shooting at us or something—“)_

“It’s not like someone is shooting at us,” Kylo muttered.

“What are you saying?” Rey asked. But her frustration with him was giving way to pity, just like Luke.

He shook his head. He couldn’t input the coordinates and fly at the same time. He tried asking her. “Can you—put—“

He couldn’t talk, not with the oppressive lead cloak of guilt from Luke and now the promise of a swift death from Rey, who still thought he was a sick animal better off dead but now it was mingled with gentleness. She would use him until they found Finn, then put him out of his misery, gently. She was even thinking about how to protect his mother from his death, how to frame it nicely. _He saved us in the end, in the end he was good…._

He started shaking, especially in his bad arm. He needed to shut them out, or they were all going to crash. He buried himself in the Force, wrapping it around like that soft scarf he missed. He didn’t care if it was the Dark side or Light side, his uncle could yell at him if he wanted but right now it didn’t matter. Under Snoke’s teachings he used both, it didn’t matter. The division seemed arbitrary to him now.

He doubted he would be able to keep this shield up for the whole time they were on this little ship together, but for now, it worked. His hands steadied, and he asked Rey in a clear voice if she would please put the coordinates for Dathomir into the navicomputer.

“You didn’t do that while we were on the ground?”

He didn’t answer. _I forgot._

Rey sighed heavily but did as he asked. They waited. Luke said nothing, but retreated to the back for a moment. Once they were in hyperspace, Kylo got up, and was startled by his uncle standing in the hatchway. When he shut out other people with the Force, he did a thorough job; he lost his sense of where people were. Luke held out the green scarf and smiled weakly.

“It was a little dirty,” Luke said. “I brushed it off for you, should be fine now.”

Kylo stared at it. He really wanted it back. But he was too scared to reach out. Luke sighed, shaking his head, and put it down on the headrest of the pilot’s seat. Kylo waited for him to leave, then picked it up and put it on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Intrusive memories and declarative memory problems are possible for someone with PTSD: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3182004/


	3. Chapter 3

Twelve hours. Twelve hours he had to survive this trip through hyperspace with Luke and Rey.

It was easy for the first few hours. The only sound was the thrum of the ship’s engines, steady white noise. Rey fell asleep curled up in the copilot’s seat. Luke searched the freighter for blankets, and finding none, stripped the only bed in the ship of its coverings so the scavenger girl could sleep more comfortably. She was draped in a sheet as she snored upright in the cockpit, lulled by star trails in the viewscreen.

Kylo tried to eat something. He hadn’t for nearly a day. He didn’t get a chance to eat the discount fruit from the asteroid, he had lost it at some point. He tried to find a ration pack that Snoke would approve of. Because this was an unmarked ship for use by spies, it was not First Order-issue, and neither was anything aboard. It was equipped with standard supplies that any planetary authorities would find neutral, and no military items. He couldn’t find anything very nutritious, or bland. Everything was so sugary. Snoke wouldn’t approve. He wished he had thought of this before leaving the _Finalizer_ , and decided not to eat.

Luke sat on the sagging cot, meditating. Kylo was still intensely focused on blocking out Rey and Luke (the last thing he needed was to see Rey’s dreams in graphic detail as she presented the good news of his death to his mother), but he didn’t need the Force to tell him that Luke was watching him while pretending not to.

“Hungry?” Luke asked.

Kylo didn’t answer. If he couldn’t eat, he would try to sleep. Luke wasn’t going to hurt him, he was mostly sure of that; his uncle was full of determination to turn him, not kill him. Kylo felt like the weight of Luke's guilt could slow down the ship as it traveled faster than light. He could sleep safely. He found his thick black robes, he could use them as blankets. He went to the engine room, slipped inside the narrow hatchway, and curled up on the cold grated metal deck next to the hyperdrive. His long legs barely fit in the small workspace.

Somehow he fell asleep in the uncomfortable position. He dreamt in recycled images—the vision, hands in his mouth, the feeling of Snoke’s cold fingers in the cavernous hall—

He woke with a gasp, and bit his lip. Had he screamed? No, he was good.

_Poor Ben, he still has nightmares. I thought he’d grow out of that eventually._

Kylo stood slowly, navigating the kinks in his bones from sleeping in such a bad position with care. He stretched his right hand carefully, adjusting his shoulder. Luke was watching him from outside the engine room.

Kylo leaned against the hatch, facing away from his uncle. He had to shut them out again. He reached up, felt the soft fabric, let his mind drift into the security of the Force, cushioned from all the noise.

“What are you doing?” Luke asked, breaking his concentration. The Jedi master stayed outside of the engine room, leaning against the bulkhead opposite him, but the hall was so narrow that he was still standing way too close. With his oppressive presence in the Force, the whole space changed for Kylo. Luke made the bright white light of the workspace seem dim and claustrophobic.

Kylo stared at the deck. It wasn’t worth explaining.

“I felt you using the Force,” Luke said. “Reaching out. Are you trying to sense the others?” _What was he doing? Why won’t he talk to me?_

Kylo wished he would just leave. Now he couldn’t even block them out without raising alarms.

Luke kept talking. “Please, I want to understand.” _I can’t help if I don’t understand._

Luke thought of this long hyperspace trip as his chance to bring his nephew back. He intended to pester him the whole time. Because that was how Jedi were made, annoying them back to the light side of the Force.

“I won’t give up on you. There’s good in you. I feel it.” _So much good, but so much anger. I'm so sorry._

Laughable. Offensive. Where were these words fifteen years ago? Why didn’t he come looking for him then?

“Please, say something. I know you’re angry. Tell me.” _The boy should never have been trained, Luke._

Kylo swallowed. That was a memory. A memory of a ghost. He turned to face Luke, curious. And hurt. Had Obi-Wan spoken with Luke about him? And said that he shouldn’t have been trained? Was it real or was Luke imagining that somber old voice?

“Hey,” Luke said. He tapped his head. “None of that, okay?”

Kylo nearly growled. “Then leave me alone.”

He retreated back into the engine room and tried to block again, but Luke was still there. _What is he doing? Is this something Snoke taught him? I failed him. How can I call myself a Jedi master when I know only a tiny fraction of the subject?_

“Do you want to have morning meal?” Luke tried. “Rey found hundreds of ration packs in the galley, and there’s the fruit from yesterday.”

In his uncle’s mechanical hand was the bag he had purchased at the asteroid, one of the fruits quashed and leaking but the rest seemed fine. Did Luke take it from him? Or pick it up like he had the scarf? Luke’s thoughts were scattered, thinking about a desert creature he had once lured out of hiding with a treat. Everyone thought of him as an animal. Something to lure, to leash, to put down.

He didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of watching him have a breakdown over a bag of discount fruit, so he let it go. He calmly followed Luke out to the small galley and quarters. Rey nodded to them as they emerged from the engine rooms, digging in to three open rations at once. She sat at the table on a tall stool, legs swinging, her face just visible above the heaping pile of ration packages. She loved the options, the sweet taste, the way they warmed themselves upon opening. Kylo smelled the food and his stomach growled.

Luke passed the bag of fruit to Kylo, who only took one. It would look suspicious if he took more than that. Snoke approved of nutritious fruits and vegetables. Fruit was the only sweet thing he got to eat.

“Have a ration,” Luke said cheerfully, sitting down next to Rey. He tossed Kylo a pack of something sugary. Kylo put it aside and tried to find something in Rey’s huge pile of food that he might be allowed to eat. Finally he found a promising green mush. He opened it.

“Oh,” Rey said, of the smell. “Have one of these, they’re better.”

He ignored her offering and tried a bit of the green ration. It was warm, and tasty, despite how Rey thought it smelled. He wondered if it was too tasty. But he had to have something more than one fruit. He ate it, savoring every bite slowly.

_I did that to him._

Kylo kept eating, but Rey was staring at him, at his scar, and thinking very loudly. _Why did I do that? I should have killed him. But Luke seems to care about him so much._

“We have four more hours before we arrive,” Luke said, breaking the awkward silence. “Would you two be interested in doing some exercises? There isn’t a lot of room, but we can practice some basics together.”

“Yeah!” Rey said.

Kylo peeled and savored his fruit.

“Ben? Would you join us?”

“Will you stop calling me that?”

 _He talked to me_ , Luke thought. _Okay. That’s a start._

Rey laughed. It was a harsh noise, like high desert sunlight. “What does it matter? It’s your name.”

“It’s the name of a dead boy.” Kylo swallowed the rest of his fruit, but now it tasted like nothing. Watery pulp.

“You aren’t dead.” _Yet._

Her fantasy was growing more elaborate. She wondered if there was a gentle poison she could slip into his food, since he seemed to eat such disgusting things anyway, he wouldn’t notice _. But then, he would probably prefer to die in battle. Protecting someone. Then he would be good in the end._

If he were younger and more naïve Kylo would have told Luke on her. He imagined it: _“Uncle Luke, Rey keeps thinking about killing me.”_ It wouldn’t go over well. He used to say things like that, but he got in trouble. _(“Mom, that senator wants to do bad things to you.”_

_“I know, sweetheart, that’s why I have a blaster. Now stop that.”_

_“Mom, there’s a voice in my head. A man.”_

_“You have to stop listening to other people’s thoughts. It’s not polite.”_

_“But mom, he’s talking to me, it’s not like normal.”_

**_Nothing about this is normal._ ** _“Threepio, why don’t you take Ben on a walk...yes, outside…”)_

He was staring at his empty plate. He shivered, looking around at the empty galley. Someone had turned the bright overhead lights off, and the only light was the dim glowpanels along the deck. Luke and Rey were gone. How long was he out of it this time? Had they tried to talk to him? His breathing sped up, angry at himself. He had showed so much weakness. He wanted to hit something, but there wasn’t anything nearby. He clenched his fists, trying not to move. He used to hit himself, but Snoke didn’t like that, so he had to stop.

Luke and Rey were in the cockpit talking, a low murmur. Rey laughed at something.  

He stood, looked around for a target, and _crushed_ the only sleeping cot on the ship with the Force. Springs popped out of the flimsy fabric, and he released it. It drooped sadly, stuffing falling out over the side of the bed. He went to the engine room, piled his robes on around him, not wearing the whole outfit but just relishing the warmth and weight as he sat crosslegged in the little space.

He missed the _Finalizer_. He missed his silent quarters, missed his workout routine, missed his solitary meals, even missed meetings with Hux. He had a feeling that this stop at Dathomir was only a stop, though. They were collecting more people there, more people to ship elsewhere. He wished he could meditate and try to locate the Knights again, but if he did that with the overwhelming presences of Luke and Rey so close he didn’t know what would happen to him. He might lose whole hours and not accomplish anything.

He felt and then heard Luke approaching. He stiffened, holding his robes close, and stared at the deck. “Just checking on you,” Luke said. “Are you okay?”

He didn’t answer. Luke moved to touch him, and to stop him he said quickly, “I’m fine.”

Luke wanted to talk about the zoning out. It had happened too much already and this one over morning meal had been really bad. Kylo wanted to disappear in shame.

_What? How is he doing that? It’s like he’s not here!_

Kylo realized he had accidentally used his “hiding” trick without thinking. Apparently he couldn’t do anything without intense scrutiny, not even daydream about disappearing. Now his uncle was marveling at the trick, wondering if it was something else Snoke had taught him, then spiraling into the same guilt over not knowing everything about the Force. It was too much. Kylo tried to speak. “Please leave me alone.”

Either he had failed to speak or Luke ignored him. The Jedi master sat down outside the engine room, looking in through the hatch. He sat in the same crosslegged posture, mirroring him. False starts and explanations and questions raced through his head. _I have to try_. “Can I get you anything? You didn’t eat much.”

Kylo shook his head. Luke radiated confused, conflicting emotions, his presence thick and sharp. Kylo pulled his robes tighter around his shoulders as if to protect against it. Luke moved to help him adjust the cloth when it fell off one shoulder, but Kylo flinched away. Luke’s hand fell and he sighed heavily. _I’m so close. But he won’t let me in. Oh, Leia, I don’t know if I can fix this._

“You can’t fix me,” Kylo said.

“I don’t know about that,” Luke said. His eyes twinkled. “I’m a pretty good mechanic.”

Luke was thrilled that he had said something several times now and wanted to keep him talking. Kylo knew he wouldn’t go away no matter what, so he tried to be as plain as possible. “You want me to go back when we find our people. I can’t. Please stop trying.”

“Why can’t you?” Luke asked.

Kylo didn’t know how to answer that. He never belonged at home? Everyone had been afraid of him enough as a little kid, so now that he was a fully grown monster it made the most sense to stay away?

“Ben, are you still with me?”

Kylo nodded.

“Okay,” Luke said. _What can I say to make him come home?_ “Your mother still wants you to come home. She misses you.” _Oh, why did I say that? Ben was always so stressful to her. And after Han…If he does actually come with me, I’ll have to take most of the responsibility for him._

Kylo fidgeted with his robe in one hand. He knew that but hearing it straight from Luke still hurt. 

“Come home,” Luke insisted.

“It’s too late.” Kylo met his uncle’s old eyes. “It’s okay. Spend your time on Rey. She can still be saved.”

 _Typical Ben, dumping all that on me, it doesn’t even make sense_ —Luke shook his head. “You’re both important to me. This isn’t a matter of my time. I just want to make things right.” _I want you to be **happy**._

“You would have seen us all dead. Can you make that right?” He didn’t bother addressing the unspoken thought. He didn’t remember being happy. He doubted he was capable.

“I didn’t know that was going to happen.”

“Ren did.”

Luke went still, face stern. “I haven’t told Rey about this yet.”

“What, are you waiting for her birthday party or something?” Kylo snapped.

Luke blinked. Then he laughed.

“It’s not funny,” Kylo said. He gripped the robes hard. “She doesn’t remember, it’s not funny.”

“No, it’s you. You made it a joke. You always did that, you joke to make things lighter.” _I forgot you did that._ Luke stopped laughing and watched him. Kylo hid his face. He was trying to keep from crying. “Hey. You’re right, it’s not really funny, I was just—I’m so glad you made a joke. I’m waiting for a good time with Rey, that’s all. You’re right, I should do it soon. Would you tell her with me? Ben, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t remember things,” he said.

_Why did you say that? Why tell him anything?_

He bit his lip to keep from saying more. He absolutely would not discuss this further with his prying uncle. Too many times he had tried to tell his mom or uncle or ~~dad~~ something only to be told he was using the Dark side.

But that didn’t happen this time.

“I know,” was all Luke said. He wanted to move in for a hug but remembered how Kylo had screamed at him on the asteroid for touching him, and how he had flinched away earlier. Kylo was astonished that he actually cared about a preference of his. “You’re, well...I don’t know how else to say it, but your circuits are malfunctioning.”

Kylo nodded, refusing to show his face.

“We’ll figure it out together. You’re going to be okay.” Some of that oppressive sharp lead cloak in the Force lifted. Luke felt like they had made progress, that Kylo trusted him now. Kylo wished he could take his stupid words back. Now Luke had ammunition against him and would use it somehow. He didn’t know how, but he would. When he was little, if he told one of the adults something, they would always turn around and tell another adult. Without fail. He couldn’t confide in anyone without it turning into a family shouting match.

“Do you want to join us up front?” Luke asked. He stood up, finally giving Kylo some space. “There’s a few more hours before we reach Dathomir. We can meditate together.”

He shook his head, face still down in his robe. The fabric was wet now.

“Okay. I’ll be there if you need me.”

Luke finally left. Kylo peered out from under his robes. He waited a few seconds to be sure he was actually gone, then hit himself hard, right where ~~Chewie~~ shot him.

He froze. Snoke didn’t want him to do that. He needed to be strong and uninjured to fight, and he was still recovering. He had disobeyed. He would find out.

He gripped his robes in his hands and squeezed. When that didn’t help he tore the robes off and started doing bodyweight exercises, frantic push-ups with two hands, then one, abusing his bad hand and shoulder, rationalizing with the fact that it was technically exercise. He lost track of the repetitions. He had no idea how many it took before his muscles finally gave out, pleasantly sore on his good side, screaming in pain on the other. He fell to the deck, pulled his robes over him once more, and listened blankly to the hum of the ship.

* * *

He woke up with the smell of something sweet. He sniffed and opened his eyes. Rey was crouching above him holding a ration pack. “Wake up. Eat this,” she said. “We’re almost there.”

He eyed the sticky sweet package but made no move to take it. She sighed and left it on the floor, and left him alone.

He picked it up but left it on the galley table. He saw that someone had rolled the remains of the thin cot up and stored it under the bed. He knew he would be hungry later if he didn’t find something now, and he searched the pile for another green ration pack. He couldn’t find one.

Rey and Luke were talking. The hushed voices again reminded him too much of childhood. It didn’t help that Rey was just as much an impatient fighter as his mother. She came into the galley to retrieve him for the approach to the port, and saw the untouched food and his unsuccessful rummaging. _What’s the problem with the one I gave you? If you won’t eat it, I will._

He wanted to offer her the food but that would mean admitting he couldn’t stay out of her head.

“Ready to land?” Rey asked.

He nodded and followed her into the cockpit. Luke had already taken the ship out of hyperdrive. Dathomir loomed ahead, shockingly red and blue against the black of space. Luke smiled up at him and offered the controls. Kylo slipped into the copilot seat, relieved to let a more experienced pilot handle the approach. Although it was his luck that he had to make the difficult approach to the busy asteroid by himself but had help for the easy port on remote Dathomir.

They landed and docked uneventfully. Jessika Pava and Artoo had beaten them by a few hours, and Kylo saw the _Falcon_ through the viewscreen. While Luke finished shutting the ship down, he dressed in fresh clothes in the relative privacy of the engine room. This time he didn’t hide his lightsaber. He felt like he would need it here. He clipped it into its usual place, and strapped the blaster on the other side.

He strode out into galley and opened the hatch to the docking bay. The air was hot and swampy, but the docking area looked like any other in the galaxy: dimly lit, boring, concrete, with technicians and pilots walking around, going about their business. He hated spaceports. He associated them with long hours of wishing he could actually go see the planet they were at while hiding in a cockpit, small, scared, and ready to take off when his ~~father~~ came running back, inevitably pursued by gunfire.

Jessika was already outside, and she didn’t expect him to be the first off the ship. “Where’s Rey?” she asked. _Dead? Did you kill her? Oh no she’s dead. I’m dead._

Kylo jerked his head toward the inside of the ship. “Inside.”

“Oh, good. Hey, where are you going? Luke, Rey, he’s leaving!” Jessika called.

Kylo walked quickly, heading to the control area of the port. He would find out where the men with the droids were docked. He wouldn’t mess around this time. There was a windowed office on the second level of the port-- that was the control room. He moved swiftly through the docked ships and people. At some point, Artoo beeped tersely at him to slow down. He turned and almost smiled at the sight of the little blue and white droid.

“Ben, wait!” Luke shouted. He was running toward them.

He kept walking. Artoo went with him.

 _Stubborn as his mother._ Luke jogged until he was even with them. “What’s your plan?”

“Control room. Roster of recent traffic.”

“How are you going to get that?” Luke said. He fell into step beside him.

“They will give it to me.”

Rey and Jessika joined them, saving Luke the trouble of finding a way to lecture him without pushing him away. The pilot was slightly out of breath from running.

“Where are we going?” Rey asked.

Their large group of suspicious-looking people and droid was drawing attention. Pilots and ground staff alike watched them. Kylo wanted to keep this quiet. He rubbed his forehead. He didn’t know if his shielding trick would work on a group. He had never had occasion to try before. He tried…

“What is it, what are you doing?” Luke asked.

Kylo kicked the ground, suddenly, violently. He scared both women with the motion. Luke’s hand edged toward his saber. “Nothing,” Kylo said.

 _He’s so weird_ , Rey broadcasted loudly. _That was unnecessary._

“Jessika, would you go with Ben to the control room?” Luke suggested. “You might know someone or some good questions to ask.” _And you’re not completely unstable_.

“Sure,” the pilot said. Kylo frowned; she really didn’t want to be alone with him, but she admired Luke too much to turn him down. He would try not to scare her again. It wasn’t her fault she had to be around him.

Kylo, Jessika, and Artoo went inside the office structure. Jessika had her hand on her blaster.

Artoo beeped a question.

“I’m trying to find where they are at this port,” Kylo answered. “If you see a terminal, can you try looking for that?”

Artoo whirred, cocky and sure he would find it.

Three people were working in the windowed space, a human and two aliens. They moved slowly, worried about what time it was. They wanted to go home. Kylo opened his mouth to talk, but Jessika beat him to it.

She said hello to the young man working, a tall Dathomirian, and flashed him a flirty smile, and asked him if it was possible to see if her old friends had passed through, please and thank you, they should have arrived before her but they hadn’t made contact with her and she didn’t see them anywhere.

Kylo had never considered getting information like that. He doubted he could. He tried to imagine himself smiling and flirting. It was a few steps of socialization beyond him, he’d never had a chance to try those things. He didn’t know how to do those things normally, let alone to use them as weapons.

They didn’t even need Artoo to sneak into the computer. The controller supplied Jessika with a full printout of the day’s incoming ships. She handed it sideways to Kylo and thanked the man for “being so sweet.”

They headed back to the others. Jessika pointed to the paper. “Is that helpful? Are they on here?”

He nodded. “Thank you.”

“Being thanked by Kylo Ren.” She smiled at him. It was a lot like the smile to the control workers. “What a strange day. I hope things went well with your uncle, on the trip here. You don’t seem too bad.” _This man tortured Poe, though. Poe is still messed up because of what he did._

Jessika and Luke both used kindness as a weapon, words not matching their thoughts. She was being nice to preempt an attack, just like she used being nice to get the information. That was probably Luke’s logic, too.

Jessika moved to join the others, but Kylo stalked right past them and in the direction of the docking bay which held the ship he needed. They followed him, asking Jessika what was going on, if they were successful.

“Yeah, we’re heading for the ship right now,” Jessika said.

“We should have a plan,” Rey said.

“Agreed. He nearly killed these guys back at the asteroid. Artoo, can you keep him away from them? Distract him somehow?”

They were making the same mistake as before. They were following at a larger distance than before but he could still pick up the whole conversation between his ears and mind. Luke and Rey in particular seemed to have a way to push themselves onto him, shouting at him constantly.

“Good idea, Artoo. We need that, too. Jessika, you see what you can find out from the men themselves. Rey, you look at the droids. See if you can learn more. I need to stay out of sight, they’ll recognize me from before. I don’t want to tip them off even more than we already have. I’ll keep an eye on Artoo and Ben.”

He wondered what Artoo would distract him with. How the little droid planned to work against him, in league with them. He should have known. Not even Artoo was on his side. He kept walking as if he didn’t hear any of this. He wondered if Luke’s plan was actually better than his. He just wanted to hijack the ship and torture the men, and search the hold for anyone they might have captive. But he looked at the paper in his hands. Jessika got a full printout of the day’s traffic using her methods. He probably wouldn’t have gotten as much with his.

Artoo rushed up to him. He patted his head as if nothing was wrong. Artoo wanted to know if they were close. Kylo pointed to the egg-shaped cargo ship, right where Jessika’s information said it would be. “That’s it.”

Artoo suggested Ben lift him up to the top of the ship, where he might be able to find an astromech port. Kylo had to admit that was a good idea. And a good distraction. He went around the ship, and saw Rey and Jessika go in opposite directions on their tasks. He didn’t see where Luke went, but he could sense him nearby.

“Okay,” he said. Artoo produced a comlink from the top of his head, and Kylo took it. “Are you ready?”

Artoo twirled in place. Absolutely ready.

Kylo lifted him gently, and Artoo made noises like a ship flying as he soared through the air.

He almost laughed. “This is supposed to be secret,” he told the droid. “They’ll hear you if you make flying noises.”

The droid whistled back at him as if to say “I don’t caaaaaaaare.”

Kylo actually did laugh. The feeling startled him, and he nearly dropped Artoo from thirty feet in the air. But he didn’t, and he set him down atop the ship with an audible “thunk.”

Artoo chided him the rough landing, and for putting him where he couldn’t wheel around easily.

“I can’t see where you are,” Kylo said defensively. He glanced at Rey from across the underside of the huge cargo ship. The hatch was open. She was debating boarding the ship. It seemed unfair that she was allowed to do what she wanted but he had to be _distracted_ from doing the same thing. “How’s it going?”

Artoo didn’t answer. “Artoo?”

Still nothing. Kylo looked up; he couldn't see the droid. It was a good twenty foot jump. He backed up to have a running start, then propelled himself _up_ with the Force. He landed more quietly than Artoo had, and looked around.

Artoo was plugged in to a port for a droid, humming along as he worked. He whistled a hello as Kylo approached. “Why didn’t you answer me?”

Oh. This was part of the distraction. Kylo sat down next to him. He could stay out of the way. Rey was going to do what he planned, and Jessika was effective, too. Maybe this was better, working together.

Except they weren’t really working together. They thought they had tricked him into staying out of the way. They couldn’t trust him to be in on the plan, he was something they had to incorporate into their own plans as an obstacle. So, no. This wasn’t better. They were afraid of him, and they thought he was too crazy or stupid to work with.

Kylo watched Artoo work, then asked, “Can you mess with the hyperdrive from here?”

Artoo practically cackled. He couldn’t do that, but he could delay them by unbalancing the repulsors. Kylo nodded.

Luke joined them atop the ship, his huge Jedi robe catching on a piece of machinery and nearly tripping him as he landed. He adjusted them and tried to look dignified as he strode over to them.

Artoo chortled and Kylo turned to him, hiding a smile.

“What have you two learned?” Luke crouched next to Artoo, across from Kylo. _This is the happiest I’ve seen Ben since he was little. Artoo even made him laugh. This is good. We can use Artoo._

The hint of a smile on his face evaporated. He couldn’t even be happy without it being analyzed and used against him. He had to get away. He considered asking Artoo to go with him. But although he didn’t think Rey’s prediction was true—that Artoo would be converted into scraps by the First Order—he did think Snoke would disapprove of his dark Knight striking fear into enemies with a cheerful beeping droid in tow.

Artoo rose from the astromech port, whirring triumphantly. He had found the computer, bypassed a lot of security, and although there was still no employer name or certain final destination for the cargo, he did have a full list of locations from the navicomputer. Anywhere the cargo ship had been in the past month, Artoo knew about it.

Kylo wondered if Artoo would tell Luke about the sabotage. Luke wouldn’t approve.

“Anything else?” Luke asked.

Artoo beeped innocently in the negative.

Luke pursed his lips. “Artoo.”

The droid shook his head. Luke sighed and stood. He knew they had done something but let it go. _How bad could it be?_

“Let’s meet back with the others,” Luke said.

Kylo listened a moment, then pointed down, through the hull on which they stood. “Rey’s on the ship.”

“What?” Luke got his comlink out. “Why can’t anyone stick to the plan? Rey? Where are you?”

“Shh!” The tense response came back, almost sounding like static and not her voice over the comlink. Kylo knew she was very interested in some cargo, and nauseated by it. _Are there people in there?_

“Hey, guys?” Jessika’s voice. “I managed to chat with the captain and co-pilot for a bit but the captain’s heading your way now. Just a heads up. I’ll be at the rendezvous.”

“Rey, get out of there,” Luke said tersely into the comlink. He gestured for Kylo to follow him off of the ship. The old Jedi hopped down twenty feet easily, gliding along in a steady walk right after landing. Kylo picked up Artoo in both arms and followed him down, landing softly on the concrete. Artoo bleated to be put down, which he did quickly. Artoo preferred flying with the Force, not being physically lifted.

“I’m the same,” Kylo told the droid. He stretched his right hand; it was sore after lifting something. “I’m sorry. I’ll remember that.”

Artoo wheeled around him, trying to trip him up. He had better remember it.

Luke was watching them. Analyzing, planning, but he couldn’t think too much on it now, not with Rey being reckless onboard a cargo ship with the captain heading back their way. Luke felt like he was suddenly the caretaker of three children, two of them reckless Jedi younglings and the third was a barely-responsible teen. _Maybe Jessika should handle Rey while I handle Ben_. He tried the comlink again. “Rey, the cargo runners are coming back.”

“Slavers, you mean,” Rey’s voice came back, hushed but angry. “Luke, there are _people_ in here. We have to get them out!”

Kylo unhooked his lightsaber from his belt. Luke shook his head and waved at him to put it away. “I’ll handle this, you just—“ _try not to kill anyone,_ “--stay here, I’ll get her.”

Artoo moved to follow Luke onboard. Luke pointed at him. “Artoo, stay. I mean it.”

Artoo beeped in a way that sounded like sticking a tongue out, but he stayed at Kylo’s side. When Luke was gone, Artoo asked if Ben had a plan.

“Yeah, I’ll do what I should have done yesterday,” he said.

Artoo didn’t seem confident in that plan.

Kylo ignored him. He watched the short captain approach, distracted by another holo drama on his data pad and oddly fuzzy in the Force. When he was near the hatch, Kylo snuck up behind him and used the Force to knock him out. It always felt like a _rush_ of energy, flowing from his head to the other person, leaving him breathless for a moment. The man fell, and Kylo caught him before he hit the ground, laying him down on the ramp up to the cargo hold.

Artoo crooned in an “uh-oh” sort of tone as he approached them.

“He was going to find Luke and Rey,” Kylo said defensively. He rubbed his right arm with his left; the simple motion of catching the captain as he fell had hurt. Kylo didn’t mind pain, but he was starting to worry about his arm like he was worried about his mind; it was broken, perhaps beyond repair.

The two Jedi on the ship were having a heated argument about what to do with the captured people. There was some problem with simply releasing them. He remembered the cold liquid in the Knight’s throat in the vision, and the syringe attached to the droid on the asteroid. They were drugged somehow. Kylo looked down at his prisoner. He could find out how to safely release them. Rey would want that. But he needed the man to be awake.

He clicked his comlink on. “I have the captain.”

Luke and Rey went silent, and Kylo could just about feel them sharing a terrified look as they wondered how. They rushed out together, right into Kylo, Artoo, and the unconscious man.

“What did you do?” Luke crouched and felt for a pulse. _He killed him, he killed someone, why did I leave him alone---_

“He’s alive,” Kylo said. Luke slumped in relief. “When he wakes up I can learn how to let the people go. He can lead us to his employer. Where they are taking these people.”

Rey stepped over the prone form of the man, taking out her own comlink. Rey couldn’t stop thinking about the unconscious people onboard, the needles in their bodies, what must be happening to Finn. “Jessika, come back to the cargo ship. It’s safe now.”

Right now, Rey thought him less monstrous than the man lying unconscious on the ramp. They were going to rescue all these people thanks to him. She debated telling him “nice job.” She decided not to.

Luke paced back and forth. _That’s her whole reaction?_ “ _Spend your time on Rey. She can still be saved.” Is he right, am I not seeing yet another student turning to the Dark side?_

Jessika trotted up to them, taking in the scene with quick eyes. Although she seemed fuzzier than normal, just like the captain had. “So, this is not what we talked about.”

“There’s people onboard,” Rey told her. “They’re drugged, we can’t just let them off without hurting them.” She pointed to the captain with her toe. “He needs to do it.”

“And—“ Jessika burped. “So, what’s the plan?”

Rey took a step away from her friend. “Have you been drinking?”

Jessika shrugged and pointed over her shoulder with her thumb. “You should see the other guy.”

Kylo gathered that the co-pilot was black-out drunk facefirst in a puddle of substandard station beer back at the bar, and his lips twitched. He was starting to like Jessika’s methods.

“What does that mean?” Rey demanded.

“Relax, short and sweet, I found them and talked to them. At the bar. I may have ordered a few additional drinks, which the co-pilot may have had by himself.” She grinned. “I was very well-behaved. I had one. Two. Yeah, two.”

Luke’s pacing increased. _So I can’t trust Jessika either. This is great_. Then his righteous anger dissipated as he studied the three of them. Ben, sitting on the ramp staring into space, Rey and Jessika holding each other in a half-hug, laughing. _As if me, Han, and Leia weren’t exactly the same._

Kylo shook his head and focused, staring hard at the dirty concrete ground, literally grounding himself by studying it in intense detail, oil stains and clumps of dirt and hair. He hated when that happened, when it felt like he was outside of himself, lost in someone else’s head. He would need to concentrate to ensure it didn’t happen again.

He didn’t know how long it would take for the captain to wake up. Sometimes they woke up within minutes, sometimes hours. He thought it corresponded to how tired the person was but he wasn’t sure. When he captured Rey she had slept for hours.

Artoo bumped into his leg. He looked down at the droid. He would really miss him when he went back to the First Order. He traced the blue rectangles and tried not to think about it.

Luke deemed that the situation was stable enough to go on his own mission. Kylo looked up at him. “Where are you going?”

 _How did he know?—he has to stop that_. “I’m going to try to contact some old friends here,” Luke said. “Why don’t you move him inside? Let me know when he wakes up. I won’t be long.”

Kylo picked the captain up, using the Force to help when his right arm threatened to give out, and carried him aboard his ship. Rey, Jessika, and Artoo followed. Rey shut the hatch.

“Good thinking,” Jessika said. “It would just be terrible if someone could walk on up and hijack the ship.”

They laughed and made their way to cockpit. Kylo followed them, breathing hard all of a sudden. He didn’t know why but he always wanted to destroy something every time he heard Rey laugh. It was even worse when she was with a friend. He looked around the unfamiliar surroundings. They were out of the eerie cargo hold, heavy with troubled unconsciousness, and the rest of the ship was smaller, most of the space was devoted to the cargo area. There was a crew quarters, big enough for four people, and a spacious refresher and galley. The lighting was comfortable, the air fresh. It was an expensive, newer ship. He set the captain down on what looked like his own bed, the blankets mussed from recent use. He felt Rey behind him, watching.

“Keep watch over him,” Rey ordered him. “We’re going to be up front. Come on, Artoo.”

Kylo sat on the floor. Artoo followed the young women, leaving him alone with the sleeping captain.

Soon he would be able to get away from them all. He could go back to the _Finalizer_. Back to Hux and Snoke. They didn’t make him feel so terrible. They wanted him to be strong so they could do great things together. They were going to bring order to the galaxy. He felt like Luke tried to make him weak on purpose. It was working.

He wondered if Artoo would be on the Resistance base when the First Order attacked. He hoped not. He didn’t know how he felt about Rey being caught in the attack. She was supposed to be one of his own, she wasn’t supposed to die. He didn’t want Jessika to die, either. She would probably be flying against one of the squadrons Hux was planning to send.

He heard them laughing again, heard Artoo beeping happily, and lost control.

His lightsaber simply being on in his hands felt good. He tore through the bunk beds, sending pillows and cots flying through the air with the Force and sliced through them one by one.

He extinguished his blade, breathing hard. Anything soft in the quarters were destroyed. Rey and Jessika hadn’t noticed the noise. They were still talking. He turned the lightsaber on again and practiced some drills, ignoring the increasing pain in his shoulder. The noise, the deep hum and crackle made him feel powerful.

The captain stirred. Kylo stood over him, blade in hand.

The man’s eyes opened, confused at first, then he sat up in shock as he saw Kylo in his own room. “Hey. Yer that crazy kid. You followed me! You—“

Kylo leveled the lightsaber in his face, and the babbling stopped. He raised his other hand toward the man’s face. “No one will save you this time.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I have what we need,” Kylo said into the quiet.
> 
> Luke didn’t know what to say. He remembered a time when they tried to explain to a tiny Ben that reading minds was wrong, it was impolite, and the kid just didn’t seem to understand that what he was doing was wrong. He looked at the grown Ben, at Kylo Ren, and didn’t know what to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My take on Dathomir and the witches in this chapter is a mix of Clone Wars and half-remembered EU stuff. 
> 
> Enjoy!

He knew, vaguely, that Rey and Jessika stood frozen right outside of the quarters. That Rey was listening. She had been in the captain’s position before. She didn’t care; she knew Kylo would get them closer to Finn. Jessika wondered if she should call for Luke.

The man screamed, writhing in place as Kylo dug for the information, fueled by pain and rage. Kylo missed the interrogation room with the restraints; for some reason he found this easier to do when people couldn’t move. But he still saw—the cargo, the people, they had to be monitored and constantly sedated, and the transfer at the park (a park? A facility? Research?)---the transfer was the hardest part, they needed to get on a new drug then—

“How do you get them off the sedatives?” Kylo demanded.

He saw in the captain’s mind that they used a solution at the changeover point, they had to be weaned off the first sedative before they were put on the second one. He dug further, and the man shrieked. There was a container onboard, a cylinder, kept cool in a refrigeration unit. There was—he pushed harder, and the man sobbed—there was a table they used to figure out the amounts, the table was on—“please stop,” the man begged—the table was on a desk in the cargo hold, in a scratched-up bulky old datapad.

“What is your destination?” Kylo asked, and the man covered his head with his arms, shaking and crying.

“Please, stop—it’s on Corellia. Coronet City. I’ll get yer the coordinates, please, please…”

Kylo _shoved_ the man into the bulkhead. The captain hit his head and whimpered, covering his eyes. Of course it was on Corellia. It was “the past tortures Kylo Ren” week. “The coordinates, now. Who runs it?” Kylo asked. “Who pays you?”

“I don’t know, I get the credits transferred by Core Worlds Group, but that’s a big organization—“

“Tell me!” Kylo shouted, slashing at the ruins of the bed above the captain’s head. The man sniveled weakly, shielding his face from the debris, falling to the floor.

His mind screamed a mess of _please leave me alone, they don’t pay me enough, please let me live, please go away, I was supposed to be done with this in a few days._ Nothing useful _._ Kylo had to dig deep again. He reached with his hand and his mind.

“Ben!”

Kylo stopped.

Luke rushed inside, wide-eyed. He took in the sobbing red-faced man on the floor and Kylo standing above him. Kylo stepped back.

Jessika looked inside, her face drawn. Kylo gathered that she had contacted Luke. Rey followed, looking at the captain, silent. The only sound in the destroyed quarters was the crying slaver captain.

“I have what we need,” Kylo said into the quiet.

Luke didn’t know what to say _. Rey let him do this. I don’t believe it_. He remembered a time when they tried to explain to a tiny Ben that reading minds was wrong, it was impolite, and the kid just didn’t seem to understand that what he was doing was wrong. He looked at the grown Ben, at Kylo Ren, and didn’t know what to do.

“There is a solution in the cargo hold,” Kylo went on. He started to feel uncomfortable. “And a table to use it. To let the people go.”

Luke only stared at him, wallowing in the magnitude of his failure to fix Ben when he was still little, when maybe they could have done something.

Kylo swallowed and turned off his lightsaber. There it was. The anger. Luke Skywalker could wear those Jedi robes and pretend to be patient and wise, but there was a lot of anger underneath. He was truly the son of Vader.

Rey spoke up. “Let’s go set them all free.”

Luke’s anger shifted to her. “You let him do this.” _You let him slip further away._

Rey gestured down at the crying man. “He’s a slaver! What does it matter?”

Kylo looked between them. Luke didn’t get it. Rey had grown up alone, frightened, practically in slavery herself. Kylo was still figuring her out but he knew her morals didn’t match Luke’s. Luke’s mind at the moment reminded Kylo of Artoo trying to move with his wheels stuck in mud.

Rey’s mind…he didn’t know yet. She had a code of honor shaped by survival and it wasn’t so different from his own, even though she thought it was.

“That’s not the point.” Luke tried to steady himself, to dispense with the anger. He had to steer these children away from the Dark side—how could he do that when he could barely stop himself? “There are other ways to get what we need. Jessika could have had another drink with him. I could have paid him off. There are always other ways. You didn’t need to sink down to…this.” _Han, old buddy, I’m so sorry._

Kylo flinched. The well-lit room faded.

_(“I don’t know what you’re so upset about, junior. He’s more useful in a tight spot than you’ve ever been.”_

_“He’s five, you shouldn’t be taking him to tight spots! He has to stop, or else he’ll turn out like…”_

_“Well, maybe he shouldn’t be a Jedi. He can be a smuggler with his old man. He likes being with me and Chewie more anyway. We don’t have a ‘dark side’ to worry about…”)_

“Ben. Ben!” Luke touched his shoulder. Kylo cringed away, and Luke stared at him. _How can I be mad at him when he’s like this? I don’t know what’s happened to him._

“What do we do with the captain?” Jessika asked. She leaned against the hatch, oddly casual for what was going on. “And the co-pilot isn’t going to stay blacked out forever. We need a plan.”

“We should kill them,” Kylo said.

Jessika rolled her eyes. “Predictable, Kylo. Try again.”

“Take their memories and leave them in a dumpster.”

Jessika laughed. She was still a little fuzzy. Kylo felt the side of his mouth move again, pulling up into a half-grin. Luke and Rey were not amused. Luke felt worse and worse, his presence heavy. _How can I turn him from the Dark side? What’s going to happen to Rey?_

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Jessika let out a long breath and chuckled one more time. “That was inappropriate. That was a joke, right? You were joking?”

Kylo didn’t answer. Jessika’s eyes widened. _Oh it wasn’t a joke. Oh no._

“It was a joke,” Kylo assured her. He drew his blaster. “I like my first idea best.”

“Whoa, whoa,” Luke said. He stepped in front of the crying captain, whose tears had started up fresh with the possibility of his imminent death. “We can detain him until this is over. He was smuggling people, and that needs to be punished, but not by us. We’ll hand him over to proper authorities.”

“What, the New Republic?” Kylo sneered.

“What, the First Order?” Rey snapped back at him. Then she said, “Yes, hand him to the First Order. He can be target practice for their next Starkiller Base.”

“We’ll figure it out when we’ve found everyone,” Luke said impatiently.

“Right,” Rey said. She switched gears. “How can we wake those people up?”

Kylo nodded to her and said, “There’s a solution they use. It’s in a refrigerator. It needs to be given carefully for each individual person, different amounts. There’s a table we can use, it will help.”

Luke looked between them _. It’s good that they can work together, but at what cost? She’s using him to do her dirty work, and he’s letting her._ Once again Luke felt like had had no control of the situation. Like he was losing them both.

Good. He deserved to lose them.

Rey nodded curtly and led the way to the cargo hold. She took quick, shallow breaths, in shock over what they had done. But she stood by what she said on the asteroid: she intended to let him do what he was good for.

They walked together to the cargo hold, Jessika and Artoo following behind. Luke stayed with their prisoner, hoping to secure him humanely.

The dim, echoing cargo hold felt cold in the Force and cold on his skin. Kylo headed for the refrigerator—it was exactly as he had seen in the captain’s mind. He opened it, but the solution didn’t look exactly like he had seen. The liquid in the tank was only half full.

“I don’t think—“ He trailed off. He wasn’t sure, he shouldn’t say it if he wasn’t sure.

“What is it?” Rey asked, impatient.

Kylo didn’t want to leave her without an answer, even though he wasn’t sure. “There might not be enough for everyone. It’s less than what I saw in his mind.”

Rey grimaced, looking around at the cargo bay. Kylo followed her gaze. Three of the boxy droids were opened, revealing a human girl and two Dathomirian boys, all hooked up to a network of needles and cables. He hoped there was enough of the solution.

“How do we do this?” Jessika asked. “Do you guys know how to give medicine? I don’t.”

“I saw how to do it,” Kylo said. But then as he tried to think of how to get the medicine from the huge bucket in the refrigerator to the people he struggled to figure out how. “I think.”

“Great,” Jessika said. “I’m going to get Luke, hopefully he’s consoled that piece of dirt captain. He probably knows how to do stuff like this.”

“We can figure it out,” Rey said after she left. “You said there was a table?”

It was the first time they had been relatively alone since Starkiller, and Kylo had a healthy fear of her. Sometimes daydreams and fantasies could look the same as real intentions, and he needed more context to chart the map of Rey. Would his blood form a river on the terrain? Did it already?

“Hey, focus,” Rey said. “The table?”

He nodded, and led the way to the desk he saw in the captain’s mind. It had a bright glowpanel, with spare parts and small pads for receipts and order forms strewn among food wrappers. His hand shook a little as he retrieved the bulky datapad from the top shelf of the desk. He handed it to her and looked at the receipts. Just like the captain had said, the deposits of credits came from Core Worlds Group. A lot of other organizations could be hidden under that large one.

“I’ve never done anything like this,” Rey said, breaking into his thoughts. She sat on the chair and had her finger on the pad, studying intensely. “I hope the containers have all this information because otherwise we’re going to get the dosage wrong.”

Kylo went to each droid while Rey looked for the equipment to administer the solution. There were datapads clipped to them. He brought the human woman’s information to Rey. She looked at it. “Is this one of them?” she asked, and he nodded.

 _Why is he so quiet?_ Rey wondered. _He couldn’t shut up before._ He stepped away from her, awaiting more directions, watching. Listening.

She hauled out the unfamiliar equipment and started figuring it out, muttering to herself but making progress. By the time Luke and Jessika arrived, she had already used the table to calculate how much solution she needed for the human woman, and put it into sterile syringes and tubes. The whole apparatus confused Kylo to even look at it, but Rey was confident in her work.

He had liked puzzles and science apparatus like this, a long time ago. He used to choose complicated mechanical projects for his tutor droids when he had the option. He imagined being younger, lost in the puzzle at hand, working side by side with Rey with calculations and tools. He couldn’t do that anymore. He wondered when that stopped. _Probably when you became a monster._

“Okay,” Rey said. “I figured out how much she needs and I think it’s all in here correctly.”

“Rey, we don’t have to do this alone,” Luke said gently. “I contacted my old friends,” _while you guys were torturing a prisoner_ , “they’re on their way, and they have doctors with them. It’s enough that we found these people, but let’s let someone with more experience revive them.”

Rey’s face fell. _Oh. But I think I can do this_. “Okay.”

“I’d rather be very sure about what we’re doing,” Luke said.

Kylo kept his thoughts to himself with difficulty. Luke was stifling her, just like he had always done to Kylo.

“If help is on the way, we should prep to leave,” Jessika said. Then she muttered, “We know where to go next.”

They made preparations for the three-day long journey. Artoo reminded Kylo that they had sabotaged the repulsors (Kylo had forgotten entirely), and the two of them worked outside to fix it while Jessika learned the new ship’s controls.

Kylo wondered if he should take his own ship. How would he get back to the First Order without it? He remembered that hopefully he would be with the Knights when this was done. He would have help getting away from Luke, who remained hopeful that Kylo could be turned, worried about Rey, but determined to fix all his mistakes from the past. Still, it was a risk to rely on a successful outcome. He would need to take his own First Order ship again.

Static in the air. In the Force. Kylo looked down from his work on the repulsorlifts, peering across the underside of the ship.

Witches. Luke’s “old friends” were witches of Dathomir. The Force was strong with the two women who met the Jedi outside of the ship. They had long hair braided in warrior styles with beads and fangs woven in. He watched them go inside. When he and Artoo finished fixing their own mess, he packed the tools up and followed them, cautious.

Inside, the witch doctors showed Rey how to administer the medicine. They were serious, focused people, and they worked well with the scavenger girl. Kylo noted that she had indeed done everything with the equipment correctly, and they didn’t need to wait for help after all.

The three people in the cargo hold were all from Dathomir, captured within the last day and brought on board. The two men, boys really, helped each other stand and refused any further help from the witches. They were from the same village and would go back together, although Kylo knew how much trouble they would be in for being captured. Being captured meant a lot of things here—it meant weakness, and it meant being taken for a mate.

The human woman, a young girl, was from a neighboring clan, and the witches would take her home. They spent a lot of time communicating with the two clans, and Kylo, Rey, and Jessika grew impatient to leave on the long journey. The witches insisted that their clan leader, Danlin Kjo, would host them for the evening in thanks at a joint meeting of the clans. Luke nearly turned them down, but Kylo noticed something.

“You know more,” he said, stepping forward. “More of you have been taken.”

They stared at him. _Nightsister_ , one of them thought. _Or Jedi?_ They thought he was like a male witch, speaking out of turn.

“Who is this male?” she asked.

“Forgive his forward nature, Kama Vay. This is my nephew,” Luke said.

She inclined her head to him. _Related to Skywalker. A Jedi, then. Perhaps I can capture him_.

Kylo flushed and looked away.

The group decided to accept the dinner invitation—they did indeed know more and Danlin Kjo wished to speak more with Luke about the missing women. It was worth the delay. Kylo debated using the opportunity to leave on his own, but something about his initial sense of _how_ they knew more bothered him. He needed to go along.

Jessika and Artoo stayed with the slavers’ ship, but the rest took a transport back to the village, an open-air skiff driven by Kama Vay. Kylo kept to the aft of the skiff, away from her. He also stayed away from their prisoners, the captain and co-pilot of the slave ship. Their hands were bound, and they were too scared of the warrior women, of Kylo, of Rey with her staff and saber, to say or try anything.

It was a brilliant sunny afternoon outside of the port. _(“See, kid, I take you places. Shut up, Chewie, they’re good places.”)_

Kylo blinked in the sunlight, and grew hot under his scarf. Outside of the small port city, the terrain turned quickly to wilderness. Gnarled, red-black trees lined the road, and the road eventually turned to track, and that faded to grass.

They approached the village of the Singing Mountain Clan, leaving the skiff on the edge of town. Together they walked past stone houses and through the open paved market surrounding a central great hall. Kylo had rarely felt so much activity in the Force—it reminded him of all the Knights while they fought together, exhilarating. Many of the women were trained in it to various degrees—different spells, as they talked about it. He felt nearly as overwhelmed as Rey, who gaped at the community of women, their buildings, the smell of food as they approached the great hall.

Their hosts guided them to the head of the table. Luke sat next to the clan leader, Danlin Kjo, who Kylo could tell held an infatuation with the old Jedi. He watched her touch him several times over dinner, touching his hand, even his face at once point.

The meal was rich and spicy. Kylo helped himself to steamed vegetables but avoided anything with too much of the delicious-smelling seasoning. He passed on the savory breads, and the desserts, except for a piece of fruit. Even so, it was the best food he had eaten in some time. Snoke might not approve. He tried to rationalize the meal, that he needed to eat to be polite and get the information just like Jessika would, that he had avoided all the most tempting offerings perfectly. Still, he wondered if he had indulged too much. Being away from the First Order was poisoning him.

A middle-aged woman sat down next to him, squeezing between him and Luke. The wooden bench groaned with the additional weight. His head swam—her mind overwhelmed him with rushing voices and flashes of imagery. Kylo realized it was the murmur of thoughts from everyone in the hall, just like he heard all the time, but focused into one person, so it sounded different. They formed a feedback loop like two communication arrays too close together. He clutched his head.

 _Have some bread_. She thrust a platter in his face.

She was too close, the plate too close, her echo chamber mind too close. He leaned away.

She leaned in, but put the plate down. _You are like me. Dream-watcher._

Kylo knew she was right, but said, _I’m not._

Her mind went quiet. The woman tilted her head, searching his face. Kylo swallowed.

“Amma, come away from him.” The woman’s daughter approached them. She was a warrior, not like her mother. She wore the braids and carried a fine blade. “My apologies. My mother can be strange. Please, enjoy the feast.”

They were so alike that their families even made apologies about their strangeness to other people. He watched the mother and daughter go. He had never considered the possibility of the existence of someone else like him. And she had a term for it— _dream-watcher_. That didn’t sound like a curse, something that only earned endless lecturing. It sounded nice that way. 

Luke scooted closer to him, sitting where the woman had been. “Careful, Ben,” he said in a low voice. But he was smiling. He thought his nephew was staring at the warrior girl and hoped this would be a fun family-bonding topic. He would be disappointed. “I got captured here once. I sense a lot of interest in you around this table.”

Kylo didn’t say anything, and Luke’s smile waned. He wouldn’t know what to do. Snoke had forbidden such relationships. Even if it weren’t forbidden, he had never met anyone he was interested in that way. Luke just chuckled softly and told him to stay alert.

He debated telling Luke about the dream-watcher. But he couldn’t find a way to frame it without sounding five years old again (“Uncle Luke, see, other people do it too,”) and he stayed quiet.

After the meal, the group moved to a temple near the hall, joined by Danlin Kjo and, to Kylo’s surprise, the woman who offered him bread. The dream-watcher. She tended a bowl of burning herbs, inhaling deeply.

Kylo felt lightheaded almost immediately after stepping into the smoky temple with the herbal smell. He felt as though he had walked through a semi-permeable wall, leaving half of himself behind. His hands tingled. The near-constant pain in his shoulder faded to a dull throb. The part of him that might be concerned about the sudden, floating feeling drifted just beyond the wall. Something wasn’t right but he didn’t know why he should care.

Around him, people were talking. “I thank you for returning our sister to us, Master Skywalker,” Danlin Kjo said. She sat on a raised platform next to the dream-watcher, who knelt beside her bowl, breathing deep.

“I’m happy to serve,” Luke responded.

The woman looked straight at Kylo. _We’re the same. You shouldn’t be here. I’ll make you leave, you troubled thing._

 “Lee Na, tell Master Skywalker what you see,” Danlin Kjo asked.

The dream-watcher crawled backward, away from the bowl. Then she stood up, very sudden. She looked to Kylo, staring right at him, but with different eyes than her own. Kylo shrank where he stood.

“Haven’t you done enough damage already, Junior?” she asked him.  

Luke and Rey both gasped. _Han_.

Kylo recoiled. Rey stepped forward, eyes shining. “Was that…Han? Do you see his ghost? Or the past?”

Danlin Kjo took Lee Na by the shoulders and sat her down by the herbs once more. “She sees into the minds of others. It’s a rare and powerful gift. This potion helps amplify her power, so she may hear our clanswomen from afar.” She glared at Kylo, who stood still, feeling dizzy. “The presence of these men is distracting to her. You must stay outside.”

Luke bowed deeply to her and moved to exit the temple. “Come on, Ben,” he said, when Kylo hadn’t moved to follow. He was frozen. Dizzy. Sick. His head pounded.

“Go,” Rey said impatiently. “You’re distracting her.”

The direct order from Rey moved him from his stupor and he numbly followed Luke out of the temple. The sky darkened overhead, deep purple. They sat in the great hall in silence—although Luke’s thoughts, which Kylo had always perceived strongly, now practically shouted in his mind, a constant narrative. Was it the herb? The “potion?” If they were the same— _dream-watchers_ —if they were the same, did the potion amplify his power too? But he was already too much.

_Han’s voice. That was Han’s voice from another person’s mouth. Oh, Ben. I knew you regretted it. What are we missing, what’s going on inside? Ben seems like he’s stuck again, maybe I can go back in and he won’t notice. No, this isn’t right, he’s not responding again—wait._

Kylo stood, Luke watching him closely. Fear seeped into his chest. Someone else’s fear. He realized it was a fear he often caused in others—the denial-filled despair of realizing you’re about to die but aren’t ready. It was from farther away than he might usually be able to sense it, but he knew---

“They’re killing the captain and the co-pilot,” Kylo said.

Luke stood. “Where?” _I don’t know how he does this. He knows things, but how?_

Kylo didn’t even know the answer to that. The potion, whatever it was, really did amplify his usual “sensitivity.” He thought it also made him sick. He held his head, still heavy from the fumes, and led the way through the village. The fear intensified, and he started to jog. Luke would want to stop what was happening. Luke followed closely.

He pointed to a stone prison. Luke ran inside. _No, no, no._ Kylo stopped feeling the fear. It was over.

He stayed outside but couldn’t shut out Luke’s thoughts. He saw everything, images pounding into his head in time with his own elevated heartbeat. He watched the grass outside the building fade in and out, his own eyes blurring over with images that he was pretty sure Luke was seeing from inside. That happened to him sometimes, like earlier in the hangar bay, but not like this, so vivid. He covered his eyes, as if that would help, but everything intensified instead.

The men were dead, throats slit. The deaths had been quick. Four warriors stood as observers. They were from both clans. Unanimous.

“They should have stood trial!” Luke said.

“They did,” one of the warriors told him, furious at the intrusion. “Two clans, in agreement over crime and sentencing.”

_That’s not the point, the point is I didn’t want Ben to be right._

Luke bowed to the women, apologizing for their interruption and agreeing to their wisdom, and stepped back outside. He looked at Kylo, who held himself up with one arm against the building. “Ben? Are you okay?”

Kylo took deep, shuddering breaths. Words that weren’t his own came to him, heavy near the fore of Luke’s mind. “A rest, I need.”

Luke stepped in front of him, horror plain on his face. “What did you say?”

Kylo felt sick. “The boy should never have been trained, Luke.” Tears rolled down his face as the words spilled out, out of control. “Much anger in him. Like his father.”

He clapped a hand over his mouth and stumbled forward, trying to get away, trying to go to the transport. Luke followed, numb, with vague ideas to ask the witches more about the herbs, any knowledge they might have, but hearing Old Ben and Yoda gutted him.

“Calm down, Ben,” Luke said. “Can you do a breathing meditation?” _He’s going to hyperventilate_.

“He’s going to hyperventilate,” Kylo repeated. Then, “Your thoughts betray you. Your feelings for them are strong.”

Luke backed away, shaking his head slowly. “Please, stop.”

Kylo bit his lip. He thought he really might throw up. Why was he saying all this? He was usually so good at hiding, pretending he didn’t hear things. He learned to pretend so well when he was younger, when being honest only got him in trouble, and now he couldn’t stop talking. It wasn’t even normal, he was hearing ghosts in people’s heads mixed with thoughts and couldn’t help repeating their terrible words.

“Ghosts,” he choked out. “I can’t stop. Please, leave me. I’ll not leave you here, I’ve got to save you. No!”

He climbed onto the transport and his legs gave out. He curled up, but he kept seeing things, Luke’s mind pummeling his own, and he mumbled a string of nonsense into his knees. “I can’t help him, I don’t understand him, Leia. What, you’re saying my son is crazy? You’re one to talk, junior, I’m not the one who has delusions of grandeur….”

Luke rushed off to the temple to get help. Kylo felt better almost immediately. The night seemed calm after he was gone, a gentle breeze in the warm air. He noticed his breathing was way too fast, he wasn’t getting any air. He gasped, taking in huge gulps of air as if surfacing from water. He could think again with Luke gone. He looked at the controls of the transport. He should steal it. He should leave. But when he tried to stand up he simply fell over. He wondered if this was what being drunk felt like. Only he thought people were supposed to be happy when they were drunk.

He felt Luke and Rey running to him and he tried to _push_ them away, but he couldn’t. He felt stuck in a fog, the Force flowing through him, using him, right there but out of his control. “Stay away,” he moaned. “I can’t—I can’t think.”

His mind flailed, a live wire, energy arcing in the air, connecting magnetically to anyone nearby, grounding on Rey, Luke, Rey, Luke.  Desert sky, desert suns.

Danlin Kjo approached him, ignoring his plea that they stay away. “I am not a princess, I am a warrior,” Kylo said, and she stepped away. _The boy speaks in my daughter’s voice._ “You will lead your people, child.”

“He was affected by the dream-watcher’s potion,” she told Luke. “He must be one himself. It doesn’t affect other witches in this way. But unlike Lee Na, he has not been trained in its use. My apologies, Master Skywalker, I would have taken precautions had I known. You should have told me.”

 _I didn’t know. What does that even mean?_ “Well, how do we make it stop?” Luke asked. _Leia, I’m sorry._

“Leia,” Kylo cried out softly. “Leia, I’m sorry.”

“It will leave his system by the morning. Try to give him some water, and keep him awake. If he dreams in this state, who knows what he’ll see? It could break his mind.”

“We should use this,” Kylo said. “We should take advantage and kill him now. Shut up, creature! Stay out of my mind!”

“Rey?” Luke said.

“Much anger in her, like her father,” Kylo said.

“What does he mean? Luke, what does that mean?”

“I can’t tell her like this,” Kylo said, “She deserves so much better.”

“We’ll talk about this later,” Luke said firmly. “Dan, what do you mean when you say ‘dream-watcher’?”

Kylo kept talking. It felt better to let the rush of words come out than to try to stop them. He stared blankly at the stars now, limp and numb. “I could never figure him out and the whole time my old friends could have helped me? I failed him so badly. Leia, please forgive me. Stop talking, I can’t listen to this.” Kylo struggled to his hands and knees, and threw up. There. Snoke would be pleased.

“Master Skywalker, one of our doctors can watch over him. You need not do this. You may hear thoughts and memories from your own mind which are…disturbing.”

“He’s my responsibility.”

Luke picked him up and he kept mumbling things that came to him, staring at the stars. They used to calm him down. Distantly he could hear that he was still breathing too fast. “Calm down, Ben, I have you. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

 “I’ve got to save you,” Kylo mumbled.

He was set down next to gently lapping water. A lake. He could see stars on it. Stars sometimes calmed him down. “That’s it,” Luke said. He used a washcloth and wiped his face. It was cool.

“We’ll come back here when all this is done,” Kylo said, faint. “We’ll learn more from the witch doctors. We’ll figure this out. I didn’t know, I’m sorry Ben. You must be so angry with me. I didn’t bother understanding what you told me. I thought I knew enough about the Force.”

Water. Someone helped him drink water. Kylo said, “I took it upon myself to train him as a Jedi. I thought that I could instruct him just as well as Yoda. I was wrong.” He spat up the water, and closed his eyes.

“Hey, no sleeping. Stay with me, Ben.” The cool washcloth came back.

“I’ve been wrong this whole time. I could have saved him. Instead I pushed him to the Dark side.”

“Shhh. Oh, I guess I can’t complain about you talking, I chose to hear this.”

“Rey,” Kylo said, and he tried to pull away from Luke’s grasp. He looked up, things were hazy, he saw two images of his uncle swimming in front of him in the dim evening light, but he could see for a moment. This was important. He had to tell him while he could, before he lost control again. “You need to help Rey. You should kill me now. Drown me.”

“What?” Luke gasped. “Don’t say that.”

“It’s okay. I don’t belong anywhere. But you need to so Rey doesn’t.” Kylo crawled a short distance away and threw up again. The fog in the Force came back, rolled through him, and his eyes blurred. “No, stop, I can’t…I can’t kill my own nephew. I can’t kill my own father. Stop it!” he shouted. He fell into the reeds by the water, unable to hold himself up. “Stop talking, shut up, shut up…”

“Have some more water.” Luke gathered him up and held him still.

“Get away from me, you’re hurting me!” Kylo shouted.

“I know, I’m sorry. I think I understand now. But I have to keep you awake until this passes.”

He started to shiver, violently, even though the night air was warm. “Kill me, please,” Kylo begged. “I can’t—I can’t—“

“Shh, it’s temporary, Danlin says this will pass—“

“My sins are not temporary,” Kylo said. “Rey is right. I should die. My mom—I don’t want to keep hurting her. Tell her something nice.”

Luke held him close.

“I want Artoo,” Kylo said.

Luke sighed. “I know.”

Kylo said, “You and Artoo. I suppose I should I enjoy this, even though you’re so sad. You’ll be back to angry Kylo Ren soon.”

Luke’s lead cloak, the shame and failure hung heavy in the Force, and Kylo was powerless against it. He coughed and choked out, “There’s no point in telling you that’s not what I’m thinking. You really hear everything. I’m so sorry. All those times, I was wrong all those times…”

Everything was foggy. Luke’s mind moved so fast, remembering everything, and Kylo saw it all—Vader pulling information from his mind in the Emperor’s throne room, lecturing his tiny nephew after a particularly disastrous dinner party with the Mon Calamari senator, hours of research in dusty libraries, the dark eyes of his mother, tearful while she tried to tell her brother about the man in her son’s head after it was too late, and the dark-haired boy who would only talk with Artoo—only smile around Artoo—

“Stop,” Kylo whispered. “My head.”

He tried to pull away, but Luke didn’t let him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading my sadness, and for telling me how sad this makes you. I appreciate it so much <3


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He was oddly…pliable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not updating the tags for this but I want to forewarn that this chapter has a lot of people taking advantage of Kylo's situation, including a scene near the beginning where non-con almost happens. Also, this story is still strictly gen. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Shivering in the warm night air, Kylo finally recovered enough to keep some water down and stand on his own. Luke helped him walk back to the hall, where Rey was waiting with Danlin Kjo and Kama Vay. They had made Rey an honorary clanswoman. She could make a talented witch doctor someday. She had warrior braids in her hair. Kylo laughed with her joy, and then covered his mouth with his free arm. He would ruin her joy. She was so happy to have a family. He couldn’t ruin this with his presence.

He didn’t feel so compelled to speak everything aloud anymore, after the worst of the “potion” had worn off, but everyone around him still felt louder, more amplified than usual. They were more amplified, and he felt exposed, wide open to their feelings. He was oddly…pliable. He let Luke hold him up on one side, and part of him knew that if he weren’t under the influence of a Dathomirian witch potion he would be screaming, shouting against the touch, but he felt distant from that part. He kept losing himself in Luke’s thoughts, dark and guilt-ridden, then switching to Rey’s thoughts, lifted but tinged with questions.

“How is the young dream-watcher?” Danlin Kjo asked.

“Not quite back to normal yet,” Luke said. He walked him to a bench at the table. “Here, sit down.”

“Okay,” Kylo said.

Rey watched, calculating. “Can we get some of that potion? He's a lot easier to deal with this way.”

Kama Vay shook her head. “It should not be used lightly, sister. He could have died from an overdose. It’s lucky he was exposed for a short time only. It is likely Lee Na said what she needed to get him away from the smoke. It takes years of training to be able to use it correctly.”

“Shame,” Rey said. _He almost seems happy this way. It would be a kindness to keep him like this._

“I like your hair,” Kylo said. “Congratulations.”

She offered him a small smile. _It’s not really him. It’s the potion. But that was sweet._  “Thank you.”

Luke looked between him and Rey. “What happened?”

“We have welcomed Rey into the Singing Mountain Clan,” Danlin Kjo said, hugging her. Kylo smiled from secondhand joy, and turned away to hide his face. “She is welcome here any time. She is a fine warrior and witch.”

“That’s wonderful!” Luke said.

They talked for a while about Lee Na’s visions. The three women who had been abducted from the two clans were still out there, captive, and separated. The dream-watcher could hear they were kept unconscious, and could see only glimpses of what was really happening to them, but she could tell that two of them were together and the third was kept at another location. She feared that sister could die soon.

Kama Vay knelt in front of him. “How are you feeling?”

“My Knights are there,” Kylo murmured. “I have to save them.”

 _What luck that he is under the potion’s spell_. Kama Vay held her out her hand. “Do you want to come with me?”

“Okay,” Kylo said. He took her hand. She led him out of the hall, and took him through a few streets to what he assumed was her home. It was a cozy house, with a fire burning low in a grate, a homey kitchen, and two rooms. She had a wall of weaponry and potion-making materials, the tools hanging from hooks. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing.

“What’s what?”

Kylo bit his lip. “I don’t remember.”

“You’re sweating. Take off that scarf.”

He let her take off his scarf and jacket. They sat down together on her bed, the fire crackling. She gave him additional water, and used some kind of medical tool, checking his pulse. “You’ll recover fine,” she told him. Then she started to remove his shirt, and he felt afraid.

“What—“ he swallowed. “What are you doing?”

“What I wish.” Kama Vay leaned in, very close to his face. “You’re mine.”

“I should go back,” he said.

“Don’t you want this?” she asked.

“Want what?”

She kissed him. His first kiss.

Fear gripped him. Snoke. Snoke wouldn’t approve. And his Uncle Luke wouldn’t approve either. He had said to stay alert so he didn’t get captured, and here he was.

“Wait,” he said. She slid his shirt off somehow, his arms useless jelly. He saw what she wanted to do and helpless tears prickled at the corners of his eyes. “Wait.”

Kama Vay’s mind switched suddenly, a leaf in the stream switching directions with a sudden current. Kylo relaxed as her intentions changed, then tensed again as he realized she wanted to know about his arm. She touched the healed-over gash on his shoulder, inspecting the chrome implants embedded in it, and Kylo listened to her recalling years of medical training. “What is this?”

“I was in a fight,” Kylo said.

 _The wound is old._ “This is fresh bruising. Does this implant not fit? What is its function?”

She was so concerned. Kylo needed to tell her. “I couldn’t use my arm anymore, and the implants help me move my arm.”

She held his arm out to the side, and moved it at the elbow a few times. She was no longer thinking about what she wanted earlier, entirely focused on work. She felt around his muscles, the scar tissue, and he winced a little when her fingertips made contact with the metal underneath. “They go up and down your whole arm? Along your tendons?”

He nodded.

“Was a prosthetic not available? This is clumsily done." _It looks more like torture than treatment._ "You must live with chronic pain.”

He shook his head, and she gently released his arm. “I will fix this,” Kama Vay said. “Return here when you have retrieved the sisters. We can discuss a better treatment. I will send you on the journey with a pain management medication in the meantime. A warrior cannot function when they are distracted by pain.” 

“Okay,” Kylo said. He would like that.

She touched his arm one more time and stood.  _A disappointing evening after so much promise. But this must be fixed_.

Everyone thought he was a project to fix. Hux, Luke, and this witch doctor. He hung his head.

Kama Vay brought him more water, and he watched her work, consulting a thick tome full of complicated diagrams and setting up some kind of imaging device to take pictures of the inside of his arm. She made her own drawings and notes on a pad, shaking her head and scratching things out with thoughts like _That won't work_ and _It is mostly healed, is a full prosthetic necessary?_  

He wanted to look at the book. She called him a warrior. But that wasn't quite right. He was only a warrior because he had to be. And he couldn't do anything else anymore. 

 _Ben? Ben, where are you?_   Luke's voice shouted into his head as the Jedi realized Kylo was missing. 

Kylo winced. “Uncle Luke is looking for me,” he said.

Kama Vay nodded. “I’ll get Master Skywalker.”

She left. Alone, Kylo felt better, less foggy, and without her emotions pressing into him. But he still felt the concern. It hovered in his mind even with her gone, like the end of a song in a music hall. He set the water down carefully and stood up--he wanted to see the book and notes. But when he looked at it, nothing made sense. He bit his lip and blinked back tears of frustration. He should be able to read and understand, why couldn't he?

Luke and Danlin Kjo walked into Kama Vay’s home. Luke took in the sight of Kylo with his shirt off and understood what had happened very quickly, his anger bright and shocking. Kylo flinched. _I told you to stay alert—I guess it’s not your fault, you had that potion. Poor kid._

Danlin Kjo shook her head, but with a hint of a smile. “Kama Vay, these people have a mission to be on. Our clan sisters’ lives are at stake.”

"It is a good thing I brought him here," Kama Vay said. "Master Skywalker, I have some medicine. We will discuss it on the transport." 

Luke's anger softened as he helped Kylo get dressed.  _What are these scars? What did Snoke do to you?_

“Completed my training,” Kylo murmured. 

Luke went still. “What do you mean?”

Kylo bit his lip. He had said too much. Luke didn’t know.

“Ben, what do you mean?”

He shook his head and put on his jacket. “I don’t want to.”

Luke pressed his scarf into his hands and steered him out of the house. Rey stood outside, laughing at the whole thing, that he had been captured. It felt funny when Rey laughed, and he laughed too. Luke felt heavy in the Force again, thick with guilt and unanswered questions. He put his scarf on and let Luke lead him to the transport. Danlin Kjo and Luke parted after an overly long embrace, promising to return the lost clanswomen. Kama Vay drove them back to the port, speaking with Luke about Kylo’s arm. 

Kylo leaned over the side of the railing, enjoying the breeze in his hair. Rey came up to him, her braided hair whipping behind her in the cool night wind.

“You seem happy,” she said. _He doesn’t seem like a monster now._  

“You have a family now,” he said.

Rey lit up, but then her smile faded. “About that. You said…you said something about my father?” _He’s more talkative, maybe he’ll tell me something._

“Luke wants to tell you,” Kylo said. Then he felt Luke in the Force, the lead cloak, and cringed away, holding onto the railing of the skiff with both hands. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Luke approached them. _I should have told her sooner, like he said. Oh, Rey. But now isn’t a good time._

“I should have told her sooner,” Kylo started repeating, and he raised his scarf to his mouth, biting down to stop as Luke panicked.

Rey pressed the issue, getting closer to him. Kylo wished she wouldn’t, Luke was so disappointed. “But you know something.”

“Rey, leave him alone,” Luke said.

Rey set her mouth in a firm line. _I got in his head before. Maybe I can do it again, especially since he’s weak right now._

“No,” Kylo said. He had to block her, had to stop—Luke needed to tell her, she couldn’t see, couldn’t see it from him, she would hate him forever, but he couldn’t do anything with the Force. It was like when he tried to push them away earlier but nothing happened. The Force flowed through him but he had no say in what it did. “Don’t, you can’t…”

She faltered. _I have to be better than him_. “Okay.”

“I’ll explain when we’re back on the ship, okay?” Luke said.

Rey agreed. She touched her newly-braided hair and tried to recapture the happiness she felt just an hour ago.

Kylo had ruined it after all.

* * *

They made it back to the hangar without any more incidents. Jessika and Artoo met them at the ramp to the cargo ship, and after admiring Rey’s new hair, they explained why Kylo was smiling.  

“And you guys got on me for having a few drinks,” Jessika laughed. “He’s so out of it! This is great!”

Kylo laughed with her, not really sure why he was laughing but he liked how it felt.

This made Jessika point and laugh more. “Aww, you should smile more!”

Luke wasn’t amused by this. “Ben, let’s go sit down. Artoo, come on, he needs to stay awake until this passes fully.” Luke nearly took him to the ruined quarters, but thought better of it.

“I nearly killed someone in there,” Kylo said.

“You didn’t, though,” Luke said. “You’re going to be okay. Here, let’s go to the cockpit.”

“He died,” Kylo said. “You wanted him to live.”

Luke didn’t say anything more as he situated Kylo in the cockpit with Artoo. Jessika had secured the two other ships, paying for extended docking, and the ship was nearly ready for takeoff. Kylo nearly fell asleep several times. He sat with Artoo in the cockpit, behind Jessika. Artoo woke him with loud screeches any time he nearly dropped off. Jessika didn’t like that.

“Come on, buddy, I have to work here,” she complained. “You’re scaring me out of my skin.”

Artoo beeped rudely. He had a job to do, too.

Luke and Rey joined them, and Jessika took off. They rose up, up, up out, the night sky’s stars sharpening to clear points. “I like the stars,” Kylo said. Luke patted his good shoulder affectionately.

“I like them too,” Jessika said. “Let’s make star trials. Corellia, here we come!”

“No, I hate going home,” Kylo whined. “And I have to destroy Coronet City. Dad will be so mad at me.”

Everyone went quiet, and Kylo felt the lighthearted swirl of emotions turn cloudy in the cockpit.

“Awkward,” Jessika said. She pulled the control for the hyperdrive. Kylo stared at the blur of blue light, unwilling to think about why he suddenly felt so miserable.

Rey turned to glare at him from the co-pilot seat. “You killed him, monster. Or don’t you remember?”

“I’m a monster,” Kylo repeated. The words felt right. His breath hitched as he remembered—the bridge—Starkiller—Han Solo—--he brought a hand to his face, where he had touched him—he had pushed him, and he fell—

He stood suddenly, blood rushing to his head. He was going to throw up again. He ran, tripping over the raised hatch between the cockpit and living area, and barely made it to the refresher. Everyone followed him.

Artoo crooned at him softly while he wiped his mouth and sobbed.

Luke hovered awkwardly nearby, radiating conflicting hope and devastation. He missed his friend terribly. _Han, I’m sorry. Oh, Ben._

Rey watched him, arms crossed. “If you feel so bad about it, why did you do it?”

“The Supreme Leader is wise,” Kylo said. He retched again. Nothing came out. “He told me it would make me stronger.”

“Nice. Instead you’re throwing up on a droid in a refresher unit,” Jessika said.

“I thought it would please the Supreme Leader,” Kylo said, mostly to Artoo. “But he didn’t care—said it was just for me—he—he—“

“Okay, let’s stop gawking,” Luke said, shooing them away. Kylo cringed as he entered the refresher unit and crouched beside him; Luke felt like lead, like the thick fog like he had felt on Dathomir. _Am I any better than Kama Vay if I ask him questions now? But I need to. This might be my only chance to learn what’s happened_. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”

“It’s not,” Kylo said. He wiped his face, and backed away into the corner of the cramped refresher. The three of them, Kylo, Luke, and Artoo took up the entire space. Artoo crooned again, and Kylo sniffed, reaching out to touch the droid’s side.

Luke moved from his crouch into a crosslegged position, blocking the hatch and sitting way too close. Kylo pulled his knees to his chest.

“I forgive you,” Luke said. _Is there any point to this conversation right now? Is it real if he’s not himself?_   “I know your mom does, too. We just want you to come home.”

Kylo buried his face in his knees. “I can’t.”

Luke’s mind flashed, explosions of brightness that made Kylo squeeze his eyes shut tighter, although it didn’t help. _Snoke knew this. Ben is different, and Snoke knew it…I’m missing something, what am I missing_ ….

“What am I missing,” Kylo mumbled, and he rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, stars replacing Luke for a brief moment of relief. He rubbed again but Luke stopped him _(he's going to hurt himself)_ , metal fingers bringing his hands down.

 _I should ask while I have the chance._ “Do you want to go back to Snoke?”

Kylo shook his head. “I don’t know.”

 _(_ _"This is a lesson, Kylo Ren. This is what your lack of control brings. I will return when you have earned this."_

_"Please, I can't move--")_

“Ben. Ben, wake up,” Luke said, tapping his face. Kylo blinked. The Jedi looked pale. He had heard Kylo reliving his training, repeating things from his own mind. Luke heard the words. He was still helpless under this witch potion, couldn’t resist questions, couldn’t shut up.

“Please don’t make me,” Kylo begged. Luke wanted to ask more, but he paused, his mouth open.

“Okay,” he said after a long wait. He held out his hand. “Come on. Kama Vay said food would help, too, if you can keep it down.”

“You don’t want me to be like this?” Kylo asked, wiping his eyes. “You want me to be myself?”

Luke winced, considering. _I have to tell the truth, don’t I? He can hear everything._ “You are easier to handle this way, but it’s not right to take advantage of you.” _Like all of us have done today. I shouldn't have said anything. Should have waited._

Kylo took his hand and accepted help standing. Artoo followed them to the galley.

Rey and Jessika were at the table, surrounded by Rey’s usual feast. “Dig in,” Jessika said. “Midnight feast before bed.” She slid a dessert over to him. “Have some, you look like you need some chocolate.”

“Not allowed,” Kylo said. He flushed and bit his lip. Then he cringed away from Luke again, who now felt like a weight pressing down. _Snoke did this….a Jedi must use the Force for defense, never for attack._  

“You didn’t eat that sticky bun yesterday,” Rey said. “Is that ‘not allowed’ either?”

Kylo lowered his head, ashamed. He had to stop talking.

They went quiet but they all kept thinking about him and how strange he was. _He only had plain vegetables at the clan’s feast…that horrible green ration, is that all he’s allowed?_

He held his ears, as if that could shut them out. “It’s fine. Don't worry about me.”

Jessika leaned forward. _Patricidal psychopath with an eating disorder_. “It’s not fine, sweetie. Everyone needs food, all kinds of foods, you can’t just not eat.”

 _He deserves it_ , Rey was trying to think to herself. _“_ He’s only ‘sweet’ right now because he’s drugged out of his mind.”

Jessika patted his back. “You’re right. But also. A drunk girl’s words are a sober girl’s thoughts.”

Kylo didn’t know what that meant, but he could feel from Jessika that she wasn’t afraid of him anymore. She was quoting someone—her mother? Her mother had rubbed her back like she rubbed his now.

He had to get away from the weight of Luke, threatening to crush him, and Jessika’s misplaced pity. Rey was right. He deserved it—his function was to fight, not enjoy meals unsuitable for him. He wished he hadn’t betrayed the Supreme Leader multiple times today, telling Luke even a little about the training and now about the food. Snoke had told him to keep all their training a secret, and told him to never tell anyone but the server droids about his special diet. It was just a special diet to keep him strong, it wasn’t bad, but other people wouldn’t understand. He saw that Snoke was right. They didn’t understand.

He stumbled back to the refresher. Artoo stayed with him. He could hear the three of them talking about him. About how messed up he was. Whether he was good or bad. He remembered once again the hushed conversations between his parents and Luke. He didn’t want to hear it anymore.

“Artoo,” Kylo said. “I really want to sleep.”

The droid bleated a firm “no.”

“Okay,” Kylo said. He rubbed his scalp; his hair hurt. “Then don’t let me say anything else to them. If I start to talk, cut me off.”

The droid agreed. He could do that.

The weight of Luke shifted on the ship. Kylo knew he was coming, and curled up. Luke peeked inside. “How are you?”

Kylo looked to Artoo. Artoo explained their arrangement, and Luke hung his head, as if the weight pressed him down, too. “That’s a good idea. I’m going to get some sleep. Keep him up until he seems more normal, and come get me, okay? Good night, you two.”

“Good-“ Kylo started, but Artoo squealed at him to stop.

Luke grimaced and walked away.

It was a long few hours. Kylo found rations he might be allowed but only got through half of one before he needed to throw up again. He nearly fell asleep at the table, and Artoo even had to shock him awake once. He sat still, staring at an empty expanse of a bulkhead as he watched the dreams of the other people onboard. He smiled to himself— _dream-watcher_. It made sense now. Luke and Rey both had nightmares—Rey of being alone, always looking for someone on cold desert nights. Luke dreamt of everyone he loved dying, including Kylo, although he was a little boy in the dream. Jessika Pava had dreams that confused him.

After three more hours of hazy half-awareness and prodding from Artoo, something clicked back into place.

It was like putting his mask on. That part of him that had been missing since he stepped into the Dathomirian temple full of fumes came back, and the haze of unreality retreated. It was like waking up. He clenched his fingers and _shoved_ all the food off the table without touching it. Good. He could use the Force again. Use it the way he wanted, instead of it flowing through him like a helpless conduit for everyone else’s whims and questions and thoughts…

Overwhelming shame at how he had acted, the things he had said, made him stand and reach for his lightsaber at his side, trembling with rage and exhaustion, he had to destroy something, but—it wasn’t there. Did Luke take it from him? 

Artoo beeped in alarm as he _crumpled_ the galley table with his fists and slammed the remains into the deck, flattening the metal and sending shards flying. The metal pieces flew every direction, hitting the bulkheads and clattering to the deck like a rain shower.

Luke ran into the galley, robes rumpled from sleep, and Kylo snarled at him. “Where’s my lightsaber?”

Luke sighed. “There he is.” _Kylo Ren is back. It was nice to have little Ben for a while._

Kylo reached out and choked him with the Force. Luke’s eyes widened but he fought back with a shove, making Kylo take a step back and lose his hold on the Jedi’s neck.

“You can’t beat me in a fight,” Luke said. Kylo wasn’t so sure about that, but Luke hadn’t bothered drawing his own lightsaber. “Stop this now. Think. We’re working together to find your friends, remember?”

 _My friends who don’t bother responding to messages. My friends who would never put up with all this for me._ Kylo turned away and yelled again, sending the flattened bits of table flying.

“If we get searched, it will be very hard to explain why our living quarters are in such a state,” Luke said mildly.

The old Jedi had lost all fear of him while he was “little Ben,” sniveling and suggestible, all his limited, frayed control stripped away. Kylo’s shoulders heaved, he wanted to lash out, destroy something, and hurt Luke, who simply watched him pace like a caged animal. He gripped his bad shoulder and squeezed.

“We still have two days in hyperspace,” Luke said slowly, as if the wrong word would set Kylo off into another destructive rage (he was right.) “It’s a long trip. You should try to sleep now that it’s worn off.”

It was Luke’s fault he hadn’t slept, out of some fear that his mind would be even more ruined than it already was. As if it were possible for him to be even more damaged. Kylo punched the nearest bulkhead, making Luke jump and Artoo squeal. An imprint of his fist remained in the metal wall, knuckle deep, and he sucked at the small cut the metal left on his hand. “I will. Give me my lightsaber.”

Luke hesitated. He thought…Kylo would use it on himself?

“I won’t,” Kylo said, face burning as he remembered his stupid words at the lake. “I’ll be fine.”

Luke pursed his lips. _He’s dangerous with it, he’s dangerous without it._ He unclipped it from his belt and tossed it to him. Kylo caught it, and instantly felt calmer—his trembling stopped.

“We’re talking about everything later,” Luke said, firm. Kylo’s heart raced again, hearing the full agenda of items in Luke's mind--all of his problems, laid bare in one night--he did not want to talk about any of it. “I want you to calm down and sleep first.”

Kylo looked away, all his control went into not killing Luke right there.

“Try the breathing medita—“

“I know!” Kylo shouted and hit the wall again with his lightsaber in his hand. That time, it hurt.

Luke shook his head and retreated to the quarters, leaving Kylo and Artoo alone in the galley. Artoo scolded him for the mess.

Kylo wished he could sleep in the cockpit with the stars, they always calmed him down, but the girls were up there, huddled together, listening to the fight but settling back in for more sleep now that it was over. He leaned against the bulkhead he had punched and slid down. Artoo rolled up to him. He stared and stared at nothing, sleep cruelly evading his exhausted mind and body as he remembered everything that had happened with fresh waves of shame.  And fear. Luke knew everything now. He had nothing. No ship, no mask, no secrets. He stood up, pacing with his hands in his hair.

Artoo beeped at him. The droid offered to tell him a story if he would sit down.

Kylo nodded, biting his lip, and rested his head against Artoo’s while the droid launched into a time he had to rescue Threepio from a group of bounty hunters. Kylo closed his eyes.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luke shrugged out of his flowing robe and faced Kylo with his lightsaber in hand. “You don’t want to talk, so we’re going to fight it out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I updated the tags for "mild gore," I hope it's not too horrible but I'm erring on the side of over-warning and not under-warning. It's at the way end of the chapter. 
> 
> Enjoy!

“Why is all the food ruined?”

“Shh, he’s asleep.” _Aww, Artoo is so cute._

“I don’t care. That was a lot of—“ _portions_ “--food, and it’s gone.”

Kylo kept his eyes shut, pretending to be asleep, leaning heavily on Artoo as Rey and Jessika inspected the wreckage of the galley from his rage. Rey sorted through the packages of food spilled on the deck, seething, although most of them were still usable. Several had been crushed and now leaked their gooey contents onto the deck. Jessika helped her find more packs in the supplies and they took their meals to the cockpit, where they immediately started talking and laughing.

Kylo’s eyes shot open and he balled his fists. Artoo, cool and solid at his side, beeped disapprovingly at him, although with a question. “I’m fine,” he answered.

The droid didn’t believe him.

He had nothing. His mask, his robes, his ship, even his secrets, all taken from him. He needed his own ship, and didn’t have it. They had trapped him, gotten him onboard while he couldn’t speak up for himself. How would he get away now? What was he going to do? He was leading Luke Skywalker back to the Knights with no escape of their own. They would have to steal a ship together. Now it was critical that Kylo rescue them; he would need help to get away from Luke.

Luke thought he was going to fix him. Like a broken ship. Kylo held his head, pounding with sharp pain—dehydration, hunger, and sleep-deprivation. It was a special kind of headache, one he had experienced before. With Snoke.

If twelve hours on a ship with Luke and Rey had been tortuous, this was going to kill him. They still had two days on the slave ship, the _Northern Sunrise_ , before reaching Corellia. And Luke wanted to talk about how messed up he was.

They had both learned something about Kylo on Dathomir. His “sensitivity,” as Snoke put it, actually meant he was different from other Force-users, be they witches, Jedi, or Sith. Kylo sort of knew that, he had always known that for Luke it took conscious effort to hear thoughts while for him it was virtually the same as hearing normal spoken voices, but to have an actual, physical reaction to a chemical while all the other Force-sensitives in the room felt nothing meant something. His face burned as he remembered everything again—Luke holding him, Rey cornering him to talk about her father, everyone feeling sorry for him as he cried about Han Solo.

Artoo beeped a question. Kylo bit his lip. “I don’t know.”

He toyed with pretending to be sick to get away with avoiding them all, like a padawan trying to skip lessons, especially because his head really did hurt. But he knew he needed to face them eventually, and help plan the rescue so it would go the way he needed it to. Before, he was planning to prioritize his Knights and they were planning to just get Finn and run. But now they wanted to rescue the women of the Singing Mountain Clan, Rey’s new clan sisters. He remembered, as if from watching a holo drama of someone else, laughing and congratulating her. He squeezed his forearm, feeling the metal underneath, wincing at the sharp pain.  

Now the plan had to change, they had to think about rescuing everyone, at least ten people that they knew about who were missing and probably more. They would have to use different tactics, and they were going to need to coordinate.

He stood, sucking in a breath as his head swam from the simple movement, then steeled himself and headed to the cockpit. The conversation quieted as he joined them. They didn’t know what to make of him anymore. He didn’t, either. He focused on the goal, they had to get to the Knights, had to save them. He didn’t know what to do after that. He didn’t know about returning to the _Finalizer_ anymore and he didn’t want to think about it.

“How are you feeling?” Jessika asked.

She genuinely wanted to know how he was recovering from the sleepless night and overall bad experience. She thought he looked like he had “ _one hell of a hangover_.”

He looked down and away. “What’s the plan?” he asked, unwilling to answer.

Luke spoke softly, outlining the beginnings of a plan. Like Jessika, he very clearly wanted to talk about how he was feeling and what had happened on Dathomir, but he obliged. “We have the cargo ship, and they’re expecting another shipment of—“ _Jedi_ “Force-users. We need the exact coordinates of where to land, and any clearance codes. Can you remember the captain’s information, any codes or passwords he might have had? You can give the clearance codes to land the ship, and we can sneak in the back door of this place.”

Kylo considered. Rey fretted. _He can’t remember anything. We should have asked…_ her dialogue drifted off. She knew he was always listening now and had a talent for blocking, but she had to remember to do it _._ Kylo appreciated her doing so. Kylo said, “I can impersonate him well enough. Artoo should have the coordinates. I have the codes.”  

“He had a weird accent, are you sure you can do it?” Jessika said.

Kylo struggled with his desire to prove that he could do this against the knowledge that she just wanted to hear him try it. “Yes.”

“It’s not much of a plan,” Rey said doubtfully.

Luke considered. “We could try to get more intel on this place, so we might have more of a plan, but Finn has already been gone for ten days. It’s up to you, Rey. Either we go in now with what we know, or we could try to infiltrate on another front to learn more.”

Rey sighed. “Let’s do what we can now.” _Finn, I will find you._

Kylo was furious. “You still don’t intend to help my Knights. You only want Finn and the clan sisters.”

Luke leveled a sharp glare at him. He was worried he would tell Rey about her father right now, tactlessly, just to hurt them and get his way. Kylo considered it. He just wanted to be done with this—the question was, would it turn Rey against Luke, Kylo, or both of them? He had a feeling she would hate them both.

Kylo would, after all.

His exhaustion and unwillingness to start a confrontation won out. He gripped his bad arm and rubbed a tendon, and it sang in fresh pain. “We have to get ten people out. Or more. We should plan for more.”

Luke nodded, his eyes not leaving Kylo’s. “Okay. We’ll plan for that.”

They talked more on the logistics until they had something resembling a plan. It had gone better than he hoped, but Luke had warned him he wanted to talk the night before and Kylo could feel him gearing up for another confrontation whether Kylo wanted it or not.

Kylo retreated to the galley and tried to eat something, standing over the sink with his half-eaten ration from the night before. His stomach twisted and he struggled to keep anything down.

Luke followed him into the galley. He sat on one of the stools by the ruins of the table, watching him. Kylo tried to ignore him, eating was hard enough at the moment. He took a small bite, then leaned on the sink, swallowing and covering his mouth as a wave of nausea threatened. He squeezed his eyes shut.

Luke sighed. _He still seems sick from the potion. Oh, Ben. I promise we’ll learn more. Together._

Luke opened his mouth to talk but Kylo glared at him and fled, joining Jessika in the cockpit. She offered him a small smile as he sat next to her. He nodded back. Jessika didn’t need to talk about it more. Her mind was made up that the drugged him was the real him.

Kylo suspected she was partially right. Why else did he feel so ashamed? Why else did he question his destination after this mission? He thought he would join Hux back at the _Finalizer_ but now…if he meant what he said, he didn’t want to hurt his mom anymore, no matter how much he hated the Republic. It didn’t seem worth it anymore.

Luke did not take the hint. Kylo crossed his arms when he felt Luke make up his mind to follow him into the cockpit, where he sat down behind Jessika. Artoo trundled in after him, squeezing in between the co-pilot and pilot seats.

“How much do you remember? From Dathomir?” Luke asked gently.

 _They’re doing this here?_ Jessika thought. She squirmed in her seat, looking down at Artoo, positioned perfectly in the way. _Oh I’m boxed in._

“All of it,” Kylo snapped, turning to face him. “Do you really want to talk about how I got poisoned because you don’t know anything about the Force?”

Luke held his gaze, maddeningly calm on the outside. But Kylo managed to rattle him on the inside.

“You didn’t know, either,” Luke pointed out. _Snoke either doesn’t know or hasn’t told him he’s different._

Kylo narrowed his eyes at that last unspoken thought. Snoke had told him he possessed great sensitivity. But it was true he had never really explained what that meant, after teaching him to push his ability and tear into the minds of others. Kylo pressed on, “I wonder who you’ve failed worse, me or Rey. When are you going to tell Rey about her parents?”

 _Oh no I’m boxed in._ Jessika cleared her throat. “Um, should I call Rey up here, since we’re having another group meeting?”

“Yes,” Kylo said, while Luke said, “No, I’m not—“

Jessika and Kylo looked at Luke as the old Jedi hung his head. “I’m not ready.”

Kylo reached down and touched Artoo when Luke’s guilt dragged him down again, like strapping weights onto his limbs. He wanted to try to block but didn’t want to put the attention back on him.

 _I’ve never seen him like this,_ Jessika was thinking about Luke. _What the hell happened with Rey’s parents?_

“It’s time to tell her. You told her you would when we were on the ship.” Kylo gestured at the blue blank of hyperspace ahead. “Well, we’re on the ship.”

Luke didn’t say anything. He steadied himself, calling on calming techniques. Kylo and Jessika watched him.

“No,” he said. He met Kylo’s gaze. “We need to talk about how I failed you.”

Some part of Kylo had longed to hear his uncle’s oncoming apology for years, while another part panicked. “You’re abandoning her all over again,” Kylo spat, and he hopped over Artoo’s head to get out of the cockpit. Luke stopped him with an outstretched hand, covering the hatch with Jedi robes.

“Get out of my way,” Kylo growled.

“You’re using Rey to deflect my attention and it’s not going to work,” Luke said.

Kylo clenched his fists, aching to strike out.  

 _I’m out._ Jessika stood and hopped over Artoo, then squeezed past Kylo and underneath Luke’s arm. They stood alone. Kylo wondered again how a fight between them would go.

“I don’t want to talk about this,” Kylo said.

“Then listen.” Luke didn’t budge. He kept his arm in place, blocking him from leaving. “I understand now. You’re different from me when it comes to using the Force. And all those times I thought you were using the Dark side, you were just using your natural ability without meaning to. I’m sorry. Ben, I’m truly sorry. I regret all the times I yelled at you for that.”

Kylo stared past the mechanical hand, temper simmering. He had tried to tell him this when he was little and Luke only believed it after hearing from other people—he didn’t trust his little nephew back then and had been too foolish to seek help back when it could have changed things. This apology might have mattered to him at ten years old but it couldn’t change anything now. It wasn’t even the whole apology he really wanted—why didn’t Luke come after them? Why did he leave Kylo to look after everyone?

He clenched his fists. Right now he was even mad at his uncle for having what he desperately wanted, a prosthetic hand. His own right arm hurt worse than normal, now that the potion had worn off.

“Fine, apology accepted,” he said, hoping to get this over with more quickly.

Luke fixed him with accusing ice-blue eyes. He knew full well Kylo was saying what he needed to avoid talking about this further. Worse, Luke kept thinking about the lake, what Kylo had said—“ _Rey is right. I should die. My mom, I don’t want to keep hurting her.”_ Kylo really, really didn’t want to talk about that. It was a stupid thing to say. Why did he say all that? He remembered the absolute helplessness—he had been “drugged out of his mind,” like Rey put it, so he didn’t mean it.

_You’re lying to yourself now, that’s great._

Luke wanted to talk about everything—the food issues, his arm, his abilities, leaving the First Order, his request that Luke drown him in that lake—and didn’t know where to start. He thought Kylo was like an X-wing fighter that had been shot down and most of its systems were malfunctioning, and he didn’t know whether to focus on the electrical, coolant, or engines first. None of the major systems worked, he couldn’t simply patch the hull and ask Artoo to deal with the computer. The whole ship was a mess. He couldn’t even lift it out of the swamp and take a look at all of the damage.

Luke Skywalker, proud mechanic and pilot, didn’t know if he could fix something.

Kylo swallowed.

Luke was giving up on him all over again.

_(“Solo. Solo! You did good, let’s get out of here.”_

_“First time you killed someone, huh?”)_

“Ben?”

Kylo blinked; he had lost time again. His uncle stared up at him, old face creased in worry. _How can I fix this?_

“I’m not a ship,” Kylo said.

Luke grimaced. _Of course he heard that._ “No. You’re not. Come on, I have an idea.”

Kylo hesitated, but went along when Artoo nudged him. Luke led him to the back of the ship, the cargo hold where the people had been kept in the boxy prison droids. It was cold, dark, and Kylo didn’t like it.

Luke cleared a large space, using the Force to lift the droids out the way. Making room for sparring. He wanted to fight Kylo?

“What are you doing?” Kylo asked, even though he had a good idea of what Luke intended.

Luke shrugged out of his flowing robe and faced Kylo with his lightsaber in hand. “You don’t want to talk, so we’re going to fight it out.”

Artoo squealed, telling Luke how stupid that was. Kylo agreed. He hovered by the droid, sure that Luke was manipulating him somehow. Last night he stopped their fight, and now he wanted to start one?

“Are you afraid you’ll lose?” Luke ignited his lightsaber. He looked like something out of a story, glowing in green light against the dark.

Kylo gripped his own lightsaber. “No.”

Luke attacked him with a sudden thrust, and Artoo screamed, zooming out of the cargo bay. Kylo barely turned his own lightsaber on in time to parry, the crossguards flaring out.

“That’s a weak design,” Luke said casually. He landed a few more blows, which Kylo blocked easily, but he could tell Luke was just testing the waters. Holding back.

“I thought Jedi were supposed to use the Force for knowledge and defense,” Kylo said. “Never for attack.”

Luke twirled and struck hard, making Kylo’s right arm falter and whir disturbingly. Kylo winced in pain and switched hands.

“How’s your arm?” Luke said.

Kylo’s heart hammered in fear. Luke might have already won the fight right there. His arm throbbed, with a searing sharp pain near his elbow. “You’re a terrible Jedi.” 

Luke switched hands, too, smiling broadly. “Here. I’ll make it even.”

“Don’t bother.” Kylo lunged and nicked Luke’s tunic, which Luke didn’t expect.

“Not bad. You could have killed me there, and you didn’t.” Luke struck again. “You’re still our Ben.”

Kylo flushed, and landed a heavy blow. “I’m not.”

Artoo returned, with Rey and Jessika in tow. Rey yelped and nearly rushed in, but Luke said, “We’re fine, Rey. Just talking. This was my idea.”

Their blades clashed, buzzing and sparking in the dark room. To Kylo’s horror, the girls and Artoo stood to the side, watching and listening to everything.

“If your arm hurts too much, we can stop,” Luke said. Teasing.

“It’s fine,” Kylo snarled, fighting back harder.

“Kama Vay gave me some medicine for you, if you think you need it.” Luke’s eyes flashed dangerously. “She likes you.”

“Stop it,” Kylo said, slashing viciously. Luke dodged and parried easily.

He was just trying to provoke him. Kylo stepped away and lowered his blade, shoulders heaving.

“I spoke with your mom yesterday,” Luke said. “She’s glad you’re with us.”

It was true. Kylo gleaned some of the conversation, and used the surge of anger to shove Luke away from him. The old Jedi stumbled back a step but recovered quickly, grinning. “Did I strike a nerve?”

“I know what you’re doing,” Kylo said, trying to stay out of Luke’s reach. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

“You sure talked a lot yesterday,” Luke said, thrusting. He would have sliced Kylo open if he didn’t do a controlled fall backward and roll out of the way. He heard Rey gasp. “What if I told you I asked Kama Vay for more potion? So I can drag you home? Leia told me to do whatever I need to do.”

Kylo raised his weapon. “You wouldn’t.”

Luke shrugged, and went in for a flurry of blows that Kylo had difficulty managing left-handed. “I’m obviously running low on options here, Ben.”

“Luke, come on,” Jessika called from the side of the cargo hold. “This isn’t cool.”

Artoo agreed with a loud blatt.

“Leave us, please,” Luke said. They stood, blades crossed and crackling. “We’ll be fine. He already killed his father, he’s not going to kill me, too.”

Kylo attacked, and the girls screamed. Luke blocked him with ease. “We’ll be out in half an hour, if you want to get the medkit ready for Ky-lo.”

Kylo gritted his teeth and swung overhanded. Luke finally used his actual name, only to provoke him. Luke stepped easily out of the way, as if at a ballroom dance.

“This is the most messed-up family I’ve ever seen,” Jessika muttered, but she left. Rey hovered awkwardly a moment more, then followed.

“I do have medicine for managing the pain,” Luke said, when they were alone except for Artoo. He went back to slow, sparring-like attacks. “Kama Vay told me about your implants. Did Snoke do this to you?”

Kylo stayed quiet, blocking the attacks.

“You seem weak. Did you manage to eat anything today?” Luke asked, pressing harder. Kylo’s unstable blade buzzed.

“No.”

“Not allowed to eat anything, hmm?”

“I was poisoned yesterday,” Kylo spat, striking back. 

Luke parried. “You’re different from all of us. I think Snoke knows it but didn’t tell you.” Luke was bringing up every problem, every insecurity to get a rise out of him, trying to--

“I’m not a ship!” Kylo shouted, attacking with a whirl. Luke was poking his weak spots to see where the worst problems were, just like diagnosing an engine problem by pouring dye into the oil and seeing where it came out.

“Snoke didn’t tell you you’re special, did he?”

Kylo struck, forcing Luke to switch back to his right hand to defend better. Snoke did used to tell him he was special. All the time.

“He’s obviously using you,” Luke said casually. The old Jedi was barely breathing hard at all. “Why don’t you want to see that?”

Kylo didn’t answer.

“Are you afraid of him? I’ll protect you.” The offer was strange, as Luke went in for a sharp jab at that moment. Kylo twirled out of the way, barely in time.

“You told me you didn’t know if you wanted to go back to him,” Luke prodded with his words and lightsaber. “He made you kill your own father, what else is it going to take before you believe that he’s using you?”

“He didn’t make me, I made the choice,” Kylo hissed.

“You thought you would be stronger with the dark side,” Luke said. He swiped, and caught Kylo’s sleeve. Kylo jumped back, swallowing. “The dark side isn’t stronger. How many times did I tell you that?”

“You wouldn’t know!” Kylo shouted, fighting back. “You only learned one side. I know both.”

“And yet you still didn’t know that something about you is physically and mentally different from me, or Rey, or any of the clan witches.” Luke raised an eyebrow. “I think we both have a lot to learn about the Force.”

Kylo reeled himself back in; Luke had nearly succeeded in making him lose control. It was his greatest weakness, and everyone knew it.

“I’ve been thinking,” Luke said, jabbing again. Kylo parried. “I don’t think flip flopping between the light and dark side is good for you. I sense you doing it, even now. I think that’s one reason you blank out sometimes. You’re driving yourself insane.”

“I’m not crazy,” Kylo said, striking hard enough that Luke nearly lost his blade.

“I struck another nerve, I see,” Luke said. He adjusted his grip.

“If you want to turn me back to the light side, you have a funny way of doing it,” Kylo said, using the pause in the fight to roll his right shoulder. It ached.

“Your arm really bothers you, doesn’t it?” Luke said, attacking it. Kylo brought the blade up and defended himself.

“Obviously.”

Luke pursed his lips. Kylo could glean he was casting about for how to hurt him the worst. Trying to see the underside of the ship to assess the damage. Looking for the dye in the oil. “Why did you ask me to kill you, Ben?”

“I don’t want to talk about this!” Kylo shouted, ashamed that Luke could rile him so easily, ashamed at how this fight was going. It was over from the moment Luke incapacitated his stronger fighting arm, and Luke was just toying with him.

Kylo feinted, and Luke followed through slicing through the air long enough for him to get a solid kick to the old man’s abdomen. Luke let out an “oof!” of surprise and pain that satisfied Kylo very, very much.

Except he was Kylo Ren, master of the Knights of Ren, and beating up an old man should be easy for him. He shouldn’t be barely hanging on in a sparring match.

He was weak. And he had been weak ever since Starkiller. Ever since his “training.” And everyone knew it. Snoke, Hux, Luke. They all thought he was broken.

He powered off his lightsaber and stepped away from Luke, who had recovered insultingly fast from the kick. Luke kept his weapon on, but felt his side, wincing. “I’m waiting on an answer. I’m worried about you. Right now I don’t care what side of the Force you use, I just want you to be okay.”

The depth of emotion from Luke swept over him, turning his stomach. Kylo stumbled back.

“Ben?”

Kylo shook his head, covering his mouth with the back of his hand and squeezing his eyes shut. He would not throw up again. He would not.

“I’m sorry.” _This is a disaster. He’s still sick_. “I was hoping you’d feel better, getting some aggression out. I thought you’d do a little better against me.”

Kylo glared at him.

Luke watched him, silent. _Let him recover a moment._ He raised his weapon. It hummed with the motion. “Let’s go again.”

Kylo backed away. “Why are you doing this?”

“Like I said,” Luke said grimly, advancing on him, “I don’t have many options at this point. I figure this way you can at least hit me when I say something upsetting.”

Luke swung, and Kylo dodged. “I’ll go easier this time,” he said. 

“I’m not doing this!” Kylo shouted, but he turned on his lightsaber. He didn’t have much choice.

“What’s wrong with you?” Luke said, swinging again. Kylo brought up his blade and deflected it, but Luke pressed into him. “When you were little you always wanted to learn this. And I can’t read minds like you but I can sense your anger. What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know!” Kylo gritted his teeth, pushing Luke away from him with brute strength.

“I knew something had changed in you the moment I saw you on the asteroid,” Luke said. “Something happened to you. Killing Han didn’t do what you expected, did it? But there’s more. Snoke did something.”

Kylo lashed out with hard hits that Luke blocked easily. He stepped back after a moment, trying to keep in mind that Luke was doing this specifically get a rise out of him. “You know everything. I said everything yesterday. It was all true. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

“So you’ll come back with us when we’ve retrieved your friends?” Luke thrust again.

Kylo swiped the green blade away. “Can I ask something?”

“Of course.”

Kylo stepped away, twirling his saber left-handed. It felt funny but he had practiced the motion some. He supposed he would need to practice more. “Why do you support the New Republic?”

 _I did say he could ask._ “It was fifteen years ago, it’s time to move on.” Luke lunged.

“So you forgive them, like that?” Kylo parried. His hair was starting to get sweaty, sticking to his face.

“Obviously not, it took me a while. But home is where my family is. If I came home, you can come home, too.”

“They burned my friends alive.”

Luke paused a moment. Kylo bit his lip. Why did he say that?

Maybe that was where the oil really came out in his engine.

He knew it would horrify his uncle now, now that he knew he was different, so he kept going. He pointed to his head with his free hand. “I heard it all. I heard them die.”

Luke blinked at him. _I didn’t think of that._ “I’m sorry.”

“They were locked in their rooms.”

Luke struck out, trying to distract Kylo with a flurry of attacks so he would stop talking about it. As Kylo remembered, he was grateful for the physical activity—he thought he might zone out again without it as he submerged himself in the memories. “Senna tried to contact her mom,” he panted, blocking Luke’s increasingly furious attacks. Kylo wasn’t sure if it was only sweat on his face anymore, but he didn’t care. Luke needed to hear this, deserved to hear this. He wanted Kylo to talk, well, he would talk. “She was coughing too much, and her mom couldn’t understand her.”

“Ben,” Luke said, his expression pained. “I’m really sorry you had to go through that.” _Anyone would go mad_. Luke pressed another attack.

“You think I’m crazy,” Kylo said flatly. Their blades crossed and crackled.

Luke grimaced. “No one should have to go through that--”

"Rey's mom knew she wouldn't see her again," Kylo said, pressing his advantage. The fight had gone out of Luke entirely. "She wanted to see her one last time. That was her last thought."

 _Ben. Rey. I'm sorry._ Luke struggled against his attacks, distracted now.

“The Republic wants us all dead,” Kylo said. “They are why all your students died, and Rey grew up alone.”

He disarmed Luke, the green lightsaber clattering to the deck, and held the red blade so close to his neck his beard sizzled. “I will not go back.”

They stood still like that a few moments, both breathing heavily. Finally, Luke said, "Okay."

Kylo lowered his weapon, turning it off, and wiped his face.

Luke watched him. “Will you go back to Snoke?”

Kylo worked his right arm. It whirred and clicked. He was a little afraid to look at it later—he could feel the metal pressing sharply into his muscles of his forearm, practically cutting. That wasn’t supposed to happen. “I don’t know.”

Luke nodded slowly. “Okay.”

Luke still wanted him to come home, thinking vaguely about _forgiveness is healing_ , but he didn't want to press the issue. Finally. Maybe the fight had been a good idea after all--Kylo no longer felt afraid that he was literally going to be dragged back after this. It felt like they reached an actual truce, not the heavy guilt-laden conflict they'd been going through for days.

“Luke?”

Kylo and Luke both whirled. Rey and Artoo stood in the hatch to the cargo bay, tears falling openly down Rey’s face.

Kylo turned away, furious with himself. He should have heard her, should have sensed that she hadn’t actually left—but she was getting better at blocking him. She had listened to the whole fight. Now that her own concentration wavered, he felt the pity in her chest as she looked at him, heard her questions.

“Is it true?” she asked, stepping forward, face shining.

Kylo might have wanted to use Rey as an excuse earlier, exactly like Luke said, but he realized way too late that he was not ready to talk about this with her. From the waves of regret pouring off Luke, the old Jedi wasn’t ready, either.

Luke planned to lie to her. Kylo thought he might actually go along with it. 

“I don’t understand,” Rey said, crying as the silence stretched on.

Kylo clenched his fists and wished he could fire Starkiller Base at the whole Republic fifteen years ago, light the skies with blood so Rey wouldn’t cry.

Rey sniffed, then frowned and pointed to him. “Ben, you’re bleeding.”

Kylo blinked and looked down; a warm trickle of blood ran down his right fist, alarmingly fast, gathering at the knuckle of his index finger and dripping in a pool by his foot. He pulled his singed, wet sleeve back; a thin metal shard, surrounded by purple bruising, poked out of his forearm. It gleamed, coated with blood, both fresh red and dark coagulated splotches.

“Oh my—“ Rey said, clapping a hand to her mouth in horror.

Kylo laughed. He had always tried so hard to hide. Now he was truly exposed, his problems literally surfacing from under his skin.

Luke and Rey stared at him and he went quiet, smearing blood on his face as he brought his hand up to cover his smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going on a little hiatus with this for a bit--I am actually going to go meet my own nephew lol (and not get in a lightsaber fight with him. And he's not going to stab his father. Honestly him being born just after TFA came out made the whole family wonder about stabbing his father someday.) Thank you so much for reading, and you can find me posting updates and such on tumblr at pixiestarpilot


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Keep it together,” Luke said, speaking quietly. “Part of being an adult is knowing when to be honest and when to…present things from a certain point of view.”

As they rushed through the ship with Luke holding his robes around Kylo’s dripping arm, he decided to go along with Luke’s lies. The Jedi had several lined up and in the aftermath of the fight picked the simplest, the one that went along with Kylo’s morbid, foolish admission that he’d heard Rey’s mother’s last thoughts as she died. Kylo heard him mentally rehearsing even as they ran to the crew quarters to the medkit. Kylo almost wanted to laugh again; he did need the medkit after all, like Luke had said as a taunt, a jest.

Every time he moved his arm at the elbow, the faulty implant stabbed through his skin, poking in and out, and the pain threatened to send Kylo right back to his “training.” He struggled to stay present, looking at the bulkheads, reminding himself how bright this ship was, not at all like the dark cavern, even using the stream of Luke’s thoughts—a mess of chest-tightening guilt over Rey and Kylo both—to stay in the moment. It would be easy to blame Luke for the stabbing pain but Kylo had sort of always known the implants were going to break down at any moment.

Luke helped him sit on one of the bunks in the crew quarters (not the one he had tortured the captain on.) Rey and Artoo followed, Rey still sniffing and wiping her eyes.

It was hard to pull his shirt over his head, and he winced as Luke helped him with it. _I’m not with Snoke. I’m not with Snoke. The lights here are bright._

It was the first time Rey had seen the full amount of damage, the line across his shoulder, neck, and face. Her eyes followed the line down where her lightsaber had struck, and down his arm, where thick red scars stood out against his skin all the way down to his wrist. She covered her mouth with both hands.

“This is….” -- _terrible--_ “Why didn’t you get a prosthetic?” Luke asked.

Kylo debated how much to tell him—Luke basically knew everything but out of a pathological compulsion he felt like he still needed to conceal things. His whole life he concealed things, from his parents, his uncle, his friends, Snoke, and telling the whole truth was too new, too scary. “My arm didn’t work anymore but it was still mostly good. We decided on this treatment so I wouldn’t need one.”

“I’ll try not to be offended,” Luke said, frowning at the metal piece poking out of his skin, drawing fresh blood whenever Kylo tried to bend his arm. “This piece isn’t moving with you now, it’s just sitting there.” _He should be screaming, why doesn’t he seem to feel it?_ “If you had a prosthetic, I could probably do something to fix it. You should consider it as an option. You’re welcome to ask me any questions about mine.”

“I thought you were a good mechanic,” Kylo said as Luke cleaned his arm. 

Luke smiled. His smile was muted by the hard conversations of the day, including the one yet to come, but he was thrilled he made a joke again.

It took a lot of towels, but the bleeding stopped as they figured out where he needed to hold still. Luke wrapped the puncture wound with a white bandage. Kylo watched for a while, then looked away.  

Jessika joined them, looking around the room, confused. When she saw Rey wiping her eyes and nose, she went to her instantly. _What the hell is going on?_ She held Rey in a long hug, patting her back whenever Rey drew a fresh harsh sob of a breath. “I have you.”

Luke helped him into a fresh shirt, then debated how Kylo was going to keep still as he cradled his forearm in his other hand. He looked around the room. “We need a sling.”

Artoo, Jessika and Rey worked together, cutting into the bedclothes of one of the cots. “You’re both not answering me,” Rey said suddenly into the silence, as she tied a knot in the fabric.

Luke sighed, moving his arm down as he did, and Kylo drew in a breath through clenched teeth at the slight motion. The metal pressed against the white bandage, a lump in the fabric. Still there, still threatening to carve his flesh if he moved the wrong way.

Luke looked at him. His eyes narrowed, he leaned forward and strained with a visible vein in his forehead. It was probably obvious to Rey and Jessika that he was attempting to have a private conversation with him. _I hope you can hear me._ _Go along with what I say. Don’t you dare tell her the truth. The truth is too horrible_.

He didn’t need Luke to tell him that. The lie didn’t sit well with him but the truth, that her father still lived, and was one of Kylo’s Knights, and they had never gone back for her….the truth made Kylo want to believe the lie. It was just like when he pushed aside the fact that there was a First Order attack planned on his mother in two days, and just like how he ignored the fact that he had no exit strategy after they rescued the Knights. He could play pretend in a world where these things weren’t really happening to him. _Cognitive dissonance, I guess._

Maybe he really was crazy.

Luke drew a deep breath. “Everything you overheard was true. I wanted to pass on what I had learned. I had a school, a temple. I searched for students with Jedi potential, and found many of all ages, and species. Ben was one of my first students. And Rey, your parents were there too.”

Rey’s breath hitched. Kylo didn’t say anything. Jessika handed Luke the sling, and Luke helped him into it, and it hurt badly enough that he almost he felt like he was in the cold cavern, lying on the hard table with Snoke standing over him--

“Well,” Luke said, sitting back and eyeing his own work critically. _This won't work._ “That'll work. I think that’s all we can do.” He turned to Rey.

Jessika and Rey sat down on the bed opposite from Luke and Kylo. The pilot had an arm around Rey, holding her tight to her side.

“They were gifted with the Force, and seasoned fighters.” Luke paused, debating how much to say. _It’s a giveaway if I say their names. Ren. But how do I explain how Ben survived?_ “I was away on Republic business when a group of operatives went to the temple.” His voice wavered.

Rey wiped her eyes, and Jessika rocked her slowly, taking her hand. _I have you, Rey._

Luke went on. “They attacked it. I felt it in the Force, even though I was far away. I couldn’t do anything.” _I felt how angry and scared you were, Ben, even from light-years away._

_(“We have to go back for her!”_

_“She’s safe there! None of us are safe anymore. None of us are ever safe.”)_

Kylo blinked; Luke was standing over him, blocking out the light from the ceiling glowpanels, leaning down to look into his eyes. Too close. Kylo jerked backward, hitting his head on the bulkhead behind him. Everything felt strangely unreal, like he was being jerked between several realities--the dark cavern with Snoke, the fires of the attack, the bright lights of the ship. Normally he might give his arm a squeeze for some light pain to stay present, but that wouldn't work anymore. He stared at the deck, the shine of the lights on the smooth surface, grounding. “I’m sorry.”

The girls stared, holding on to each other tight. Luke debated reaching out to show affection, support, but remembered how Kylo didn’t like to be touched and sat down heavily next to him again. _…should have just stayed away…left Ben traumatized, wide open for Snoke. I failed as a guardian and a Jedi master._

Luke tried to speak but Kylo felt another wave of emotion from the old Jedi, felt the words stick on a lump in his throat, his eyes burning with unshed tears. _Senna tried to talk to her mom._ I _took her from her mom._

Kylo thought hurting Luke would feel better than this. He squirmed, and stopped when his arm started to hurt again. “I’m sorry.”

 _You’re apologizing to me and I failed you in every way imaginable._ Luke reached out a hand to pat his shoulder. Kylo flinched away.

Luke’s outstretched hand retreated to cover his face, a tide retreating from the rocky shore back into a powerful ocean. Kylo saw, vividly, the ocean from the island where Luke had stayed as he called on the memory for calm. But the meditation failed, the ocean shattered like a mirror, replaced with the screams of his students from half a galaxy away.

Luke started to cry.

Jessika and Rey moved as one, standing from their bunk and rushing to hug Luke. Kylo stood to get out of the way, watching as they wrapped their arms around the old man from both sides.

“I’m okay,” Luke said, muffled from being smothered. _Get it together, Skywalker_. “I’m okay, thank you.”

Rey took Kylo’s spot next to Luke and put an arm around him, just like Jessika had held her a moment ago. Jessika stepped back and wiped her own eyes ( _Why am I even crying? What the heck? Stop it)_.

“You don’t know how much I regret not being there that day,” Luke said. Rey nodded, tears falling again. Luke faltered. _How do I explain?_ “Your parents hid you away. They knew it wasn’t safe, and I didn’t even know…they went back to the temple. They both died there in the attack. I’m so sorry, Rey. It’s my fault.”

Kylo stared at the deck, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. It was true enough. Ben Solo died there, too.

He heard Rey’s obvious question of _how did you survive when my parents didn’t_ and felt like he needed to say something to fill in the holes Luke left.

“They protected everyone,” Kylo said. He bit his lip when everyone looked at him. “They got some of us out. We ran away.”

“Right to Snoke.” Rey looked at his arm while she said that.

He nodded. It was also true enough. He did not mention that prior to finally joining Snoke he had spent years with her father and the other survivors, on the run, fighting, attacking—

_(“ It’s not safe, Kylo.”)_

“Are you okay?”

Rey stood in front of him this time, looking up at him with a strange mix of exasperation and pity, just like when he had forgotten he disconnected the communications array. He flushed and backed away, staring at the deck. _Ground, ground._

She moved toward him, then stopped, fingers twitching. “Can I touch you?”

He caught Luke’s eye. Luke nodded. _Just let her._

He nodded, looking away. She grabbed him around the middle and squeezed.

“I’m sorry,” she said, sobbing anew. “I’m so sorry for those awful things I said to you.”

He used his good arm to pat Rey awkwardly on the back, and Luke glared at him. _You could at least pretend to comfort her more._ But he didn’t know what to say, besides maybe _“this is not a ‘touch,’ this is a ‘hug.’”_ He deserved to be called “creature,” deserved her hatred. He glimpsed her thoughts now that she was upset and not concentrating—She blamed Snoke for everything he had done—she had watched him zone out, cry about his father, saw the hideous scars along his arm and thought he wasn’t capable of defending himself from Snoke. He flushed, wondering if she was right, wondering when he started thinking about the Supreme Leader as someone he needed to defend against. But she didn’t have the whole picture.

This was Luke’s fault. Kylo knew that she would find out the truth somehow, especially if they were successful in rescuing everyone—her father might not know her immediately, but he would figure it out. This was a stupid lie, it could only last for so long. Long enough for them to be able to truly work together to extract everyone. He needed to go along with it, ally himself with Luke on this. From adversaries to an uneasy truce to allies all in one day. He withdrew his patting hand and went still, willing the hug to end.

“I don’t understand,” Rey said, parting from him at last and looking to Luke. “Why would the Republic attack your students? Do they—Would they still—Are they the ones behind all this? Are they why Finn is gone?”

Kylo hadn’t considered that. He realized then that he knew the true kidnapper but his brain couldn’t, wouldn’t admit it. It was another instance of jumping to conclusions without evidence. For once, it wasn’t the Republic.

“It’s possible,” Luke admitted. He looked at Kylo, who was shaking his head. “Ben, what do you think?”

He remembered Hux telling him he had good instincts. But he remembered Luke telling him not to jump to conclusions, and Snoke promising that he had interpreted his vision incorrectly. Both his mentors told him too often that he couldn’t trust himself. “I don’t know.”

Luke could tell he was hiding something, and didn’t know how to phrase his question.

“Okay, but why attack your students?” Jessika had her hands on her hips. “You were trying to help protect the Republic. I mean, Luke, that means your own sister had a hand in the attack against you and Kylo, and that makes no sense.”

Jessika was a pilot for the Resistance. She risked her life to defend the Republic, and couldn’t imagine them doing anything like this.

“It wasn’t Leia,” Luke said heavily. “It was a faction within the Republic. We didn’t take it seriously enough.”

“But my mother did,” Rey said.

Luke nodded. “I should have listened. They had…considerable support. Financial backers. It was an invasion of trained soldiers. Leia couldn't do anything, she was just a senator back then, and she didn't hear it was going forward until....”

Kylo had a lot of bitter things to say—how only the lucky few with lightsabers actually could get out, how Luke’s stupidity killed them all several times over—but Luke knew it already.

“There was nothing left,” Luke said. He stared at his hands in his lap as he spoke. Then he looked up at Kylo. _We looked for you. Leia and I knew you were still alive._

Kylo really wanted to punch something, possibly Luke, but now his arm didn’t work and he had to keep still. The horror of his helplessness hit him then. He had to relearn how to fight. He couldn’t let them go on the rescue mission alone, they wouldn’t bother rescuing his Knights.

“We—“ he started to say, he wanted to say something about the Knights, but then Luke’s thin lie would tear, and Rey would _know_ —he shook his head and left, with all of them calling after him, using different names from different lives. _Ben._   _Kylo._

He headed past the calming, beeping presence of Artoo, straight to the cargo hold, found his lightsaber where he had dropped it and turned it on with his left hand. It felt strange, he never used his left hand to turn it on. He swallowed and started going through his normal drills--drills Rey's father had taught him, not Luke. Even though he did practice with both hands, he always started on the right side with all his movements, and nothing felt like it should, especially as he struggled to keep his other arm perfectly still. 

He felt everyone watching him from the hatch, but they didn’t say anything and eventually left him alone. 

Rey took it upon herself to check his bandages during the final day on the _Northern Sunrise_ before they arrived at Corellia. She helped him out of his sling, forcing him to bend his arm. Kylo thought he was used to pain but the repeated puncture through bruised flesh was excruciating.

_(“I see the wound is infected.”)_

“Ben?”

His head snapped up when Rey called his old name. He didn’t mind it as much when she said it—the dead girl speaking to the dead boy seemed natural. He took a shaky breath; the pain kept sending him back to that cold, echoing hall with Snoke—

_(“You must earn this, Kylo Ren.”)_

“It’s okay. Here,” she said, and he looked away, embarrassed that he couldn’t keep in the present. She wrapped his forearm in a fresh bandage and smiled sadly. “It’s okay.”

Being taken care of by Rey, the child he never rescued, _didn’t fight for_ , shook him so badly that he actually went to Luke after. He went to the galley and shut the hatch, paranoid now that he couldn’t hear her all the time. He paced, hugging his useless sling-enclosed arm to his side. “I can’t do this.”

Luke raised an eyebrow. He sipped a cup of hot chocolate. “Do what?”

“Have…Rey be nice to me.”

 _Oh, Ben._ “Keep it together,” Luke said, speaking quietly. “Part of being an adult is knowing when to be honest and when to…present things from a certain point of view.”

Kylo hated his former namesake. He knew full well who Luke was quoting, he could hear the painful conversation in Luke’s head—Old Ben, the lying, sanctimonious Jedi. He couldn’t help but think that doing something Obi-Wan would do automatically made it wrong.

But he owed it to Rey. “I can keep it together,” Kylo said.

Luke raised both eyebrows and took another sip. _Sure you can._ “Good. Let’s not talk about this again.”

Kylo nodded tightly.

They ate together that evening, the four of them and Artoo gathered around in the galley. Rey had re-purposed one of the prison droids to serve as a new table, to replace the one Kylo had destroyed. Jessika told a wild story about breaking into an old Imperial facility with her friends on Dandoran that had them all laughing.

Jessika’s face was bright red, struggling to finish through her giggles at her own story. “And I said, ‘This was your idea of a date?' And Sokol, Sokol said--whoo, sorry--and Sokol said, 'Actually, this was supposed to be a proposal!'”

Rey snorted, food spraying from her mouth. Luke chuckled, his beard twitching.

Jessika pounded the makeshift table, not finished yet. "And she has that weird goop in her hair, right, and she is _ticked,_ and she slapped him and shouted, 'Fine!'"

They all laughed again. Kylo even smiled. Jessika winked at him.

He felt safer than he had in some time. He looked around, trying to remember all the details, from the chocolate dessert Jessika convinced him to try, to Rey’s bright smile, Jessika’s wink, Luke’s twitching beard, and Artoo’s cheerful beeps. He had to remember it. 

Rey nudged him, and he looked down at her. She shrugged. "Just checking you were with us."

"I am," he said quietly. He felt a swell of emotion from both Jessika and Luke- _-they're getting along, they're getting along_ \--and tried to steer everyone away from yet another tearful conversation. "If that was the proposal, what was their wedding like?"

The group howled anew, and Jessika spread her hands as if clearing room to tell part two of the story. "Okay, so..."

 _You belong here, Ben. Why don't you see it?_  Luke thought. 

Luke had a way of ruining things even without speaking. Kylo clenched his working fist and ignored the tightening feeling in his chest when he remembered that this wasn't real, he wasn't safe, he couldn't trust them, and they were fools to trust him, because they had no idea what the First Order had planned because he hadn't told them. Why hadn't he told them? Why couldn't he? There were so many layers of lies--Luke's lies, Snoke's lies, his own lies--

_Cognitive dissonance._

Jessika's story and Rey's laughter felt farther away now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This page lists a few types of dissociation and the symptoms: http://www.healingfromcomplextraumaandptsd.com/#!dissociation/ca2a  
> Kylo in this story has basically all the symptoms. Usually, however, it is more subtle and your loved ones don't notice as often as they do in this story.
> 
> I'm currently looking into better resources from people who know what's like--the descriptions I find on most sites are written by psychologists who might not actually have a good grasp of it. If you know of a good resource, please let me know!


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey closed her eyes, and calm came over the cockpit as she settled herself in a quick meditation. Kylo envied her easy connection to actual strength in the Light side. When she opened her eyes, any fear left over from her vision was gone. “You said the future is always in motion. Well, I won’t let it happen.”

Rey had a vision two hours before they arrived.

She screamed, and Kylo’s eyes snapped open from his light sleep, although he still saw flickers of her nightmares when he did—Snoke—Luke, shouting— _Finnfinnfinn_ — _"Let me go, let me go!_ \--screaming, and fighting, and—

He jumped up from his cot, nearly colliding with Luke as he ran into the narrow corridor, both of them running to the cockpit.

“I’m all right,” Rey was saying when they got there. She breathed heavily, standing up and trying to get away from Jessika’s hug. “I’m fine.”

Kylo and Luke hovered in the hatchway, watching her get her breath. They were still in hyperspace, bright blue starlines outside. “What did you see?” Luke asked gently.

“Just a nightmare,” Rey said unconvincingly.

Jessika sat down, puffing her cheeks out. “Whatever you say, short and sweet.”

“It was a vision, wasn’t it?” Luke pressed.

“Just a nightmare,” she repeated.

“Rey, you seem to have a talent for prophetic visions.” Luke sat down in the seat behind Jessika, looking up at her as he spoke. “The things you see often seem to come to pass.”

Kylo remembered how she apparently saw him in a vision at the asteroid. Their meeting only happened because of a vision that they had followed. Luke was right.

Rey closed her eyes, and calm came over the cockpit as she settled herself in a quick meditation. Kylo envied her easy connection to actual strength in the Light side. When she opened her eyes, any fear left over from her vision was gone. “You said the future is always in motion. Well, I won’t let it happen.”

They were going to fail.

Kylo tried to feel Rey’s confidence and calm, but they were going to fail.

He retreated to the crew quarters, hearing Rey and Luke move through the ship with loud voices. He rolled up his sleeve and checked the bandage—no red. As long as he kept his arm bent and motionless in the sling, it didn’t aggravate the wound further. It took some practice but he felt confident in his ability to fight, even with one arm. Still, he wondered if they would fail because of him. His weakness.

He found a datapad and started typing out, one-handed, a rough sketch of the First Order’s plans. Enough detail to know what was happening. Without thinking, without examining why, he marched up to the cockpit where Jessika dozed lightly, alone. He could still hear Luke and Rey talking heatedly in the galley.

He showed the pad to Jessika. She blinked, looked down at it, yawned, and sat up straight in her seat.

She took it from him. “What’s this?”

He sat down in the co-pilot’s seat and waited.

 _Oh. Oh no. Oh no_. She read with growing comprehension, growing panic. Kylo bit his lip and looked away as she struggled to think of what to say— _I mean, better late than never but oh my nerfballs he didn’t mention this sooner?_

“Oh hun,” she said finally. “I’ll transmit this as soon as we’re out of hyperspace, okay?”

He nodded, pushing away the odd conflicting emotions of _my mom is safe_ and _that’s it, I don’t belong anywhere now._

“I’m not going to lie, this would have been better to know a few days ago,” Jessika went on. “But they’ll be able to evacuate now, at the least. Thanks.”

He stood to leave, but Jessika said, “Hold on. Um. I don’t think we should tell Luke and Rey yet. I feel like—I don’t know, I don’t know about this Force stuff, but I keep thinking about Rey’s nightmare and—I want this to go well, and it’s not going to if everyone is ticked off at you.”

One more lie. What was one more lie, really? He nodded and left.

Rey and Luke were still fighting when he entered the galley. He hesitated, then went in anyway. He needed to eat something.

“I’m sure,” Rey said, heated. She saw Kylo and stood, reaching into her bag for a small cloth satchel that filled Kylo with dread when he saw it. She poured a glass of water, measured out some powder from the satchel, and kept talking as she stirred. “I’m not going to tell you what I saw, it’s not important, it will only distract you, and _you_ —“ She thrust the glass into Kylo’s chest. “If you saw any of it, do not tell him, got it? Drink this.”

He looked at it. “What is it?”

“Kama Vay’s painkiller.”

“No.”

She rolled her eyes and raised the glass to his face. “It’s just a painkiller, it’s not going to send you to the Outer Rim like the potion did.”

Kylo backed away from the glass, watching the powder, not quite fully dissolved, drift down in the water like falling snow. “No.”

Rey sighed. “Please?” _This has to go well. We have to do this._

Kylo accepted the glass, ignoring Luke’s watchful eyes from behind his morning mug of hot chocolate. He didn’t understand the quick flashes he’d seen from Rey’s vision, but he did have the sense it wasn’t going to go well. Maybe this would help.

But he couldn’t drink it—he kept remembering the witch doctor’s house, the bubbling apparatus and equipment, the draft of cold air on his bare skin even in the warm night, the helplessness as she didn’t listen to him…

He set the glass down. “I’ll have something else from the medkit, if there is anything.”

Rey panicked. “There isn’t, not without knocking you out. You don’t think—I wouldn’t….I swear this is the painkiller and not the potion. I wouldn’t do that.”

That possibility hadn’t occurred to him, but now it certainly did. She _would_ do that. She had asked for some of the potion—he would be “easier to deal with.” And Luke taunted him about having more to drag him back home, but he assumed it was a lie. Now he wasn’t sure.

“I don’t need it,” he said stubbornly.

“Yes you do, you keep blanking out whenever it hurts and you can’t do that when we’re in there,” she said, her voice growing more frantic as she spoke. _We need you. I need you. Please._

He realized part of his fear stemmed from his admission to Jessika that there was a First Order attack, but Rey didn’t know, had no additional reason to want to control him, and really did want his help to rescue Finn.

“I trust you,” he said slowly. He touched the glass again. “I just don’t—“ He broke off.

“You don’t trust Kama Vay,” Luke finished for him.

He nodded, ashamed, but oddly relieved that Luke seemed to get it.

Luke took another sip of hot chocolate _. Yet another thing to worry about with Ben._ “Take the medicine. She said very specifically it would help ‘wounded warriors during battle.’ You’ll be fine. The point is you’ll feel better.” _And if not, she’ll answer to me._

That last unspoken thought made him drink it. To his surprise, some of the throbbing, bruised feeling receded within seconds. He nodded. “That helped.”

Rey nodded to herself, thinking, trying to stay calm. _The conditions are met. Everything will be fine. As long as Ben doesn’t…_

She drifted off, and Kylo almost asked what he needed to avoid doing, but she didn’t want him or Luke to know, and he decided to trust that. Maybe it was better not to know.

What was one more lie?

* * *

They went over the plan again together in the cargo hold, where Rey checked the machinery a final time. 

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” Luke asked him quietly.

Kylo had gotten used to keeping his arm as still as possible, and using only his left hand for everyday tasks. He could rely on the Force to fill in for his arm if he needed. The painkiller even seemed to help. “I can do it.”

Luke nodded. “Okay. Just be careful.”

Kylo scowled at him, and Luke smiled.

They were going to have Jessika pilot them in with Kylo voicing the dead captain. Rey would prepare the equipment to administer the solution, which they had more of now after visiting the Singing Mountain Clan’s doctors, and Luke and Artoo would disable any security teams and equipment in the facility. Jessika would keep the ship on standby for escape, while Kylo and Rey would work together to set the captives free. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it could work. They had a lot of talent between the five of them, if they could just work together. 

They came out of hyperspace under Jessika’s sure flying. She smiled at him. “Ready?”

He nodded.

As they approached Coronet City, sparkling lights spidering across the planet’s otherwise dark surface, he contacted the frequency for the delivery that Artoo found.

“T’is is the cargo freighter _Northern Sunrise_ ,” Kylo said, and he ignored Jessika as she smirked at his voice. “Requestin’ permission to land on pad two B.”

The ground crew asked for a clearance code, and Kylo rattled it off. Everything seemed fine. Jessika landed flawlessly in the smooth night air.

“We’re down,” she told Luke and Rey, who were ready in the back.

Coronet City was not as bustling as Coruscant, but felt like a return to civilization after wild Dathomir and two days in space. The architecture was a mixture of Old Republic, Empire, and New Republic, with ancient stone buildings mixed with durasteel and windowed towers, many lit up with advertisements and signs. It smelled familiar—not quite the faraway rot smell of Coruscant's thousand of years of detritus piling up in the lower levels, but stale even though they were outside, not crisp like the recycled ship air. City air, with city noises of speeders and ships cruising nearby.

They disembarked, helping Rey with their empty droid. It was filled with the equipment she would need to revive the captives, just as they had done aboard the ship. The back of the research park was just a simple landing pad with flickering glowlights lining the way inside, in need of repair.

The doors at the end of the lights slid open, and a worker in a white uniform that reminded Kylo of a medical setting approached them with a datapad. It was a tiny, foxlike Amaran. Rey looked up from the droid, staring defiantly at him.

“We’ve got a delivery,” Kylo told him in the captain’s accent.

The Amaran eyed him suspiciously ( _did Captain Sylver look like that?_ ), and with a sigh Kylo waved with his free hand for Luke to step forward and take care of it.

Luke in turn gestured to Rey. “Please, go ahead.”

Rey straightened and spoke clearly. “You will let us pass through. And forget you saw us.”

Luke cleared his throat while the Amaran stared at Rey, confused but unmoving. “That’s not easy to ask him to do. It should be a concrete suggestion.”

Rey shifted from foot to foot. “Oh. Then—go home, you will go home and not come back tonight.”

“Wait a minute, what’s the code to get inside?” Kylo asked. The doors had slid closed.

“One one one one,” the Amaran said.

“Really?” Rey giggled. Luke chuckled, too. Kylo smiled but hid it quickly; they were supposed to be focused on rescuing everyone, not joking around.

With the lone night shift worker dealt with, the group headed for the door, with Rey pushing the deactivated droid, and Artoo leading the way.

“Okay,” Luke said. “Artoo and I will go first and deal with any more security. Rey, when you find everyone, work quickly as you can. Ben, you protect her while she works.”

Kylo nodded, lightsaber at his side, ready. Rey didn’t even object with her usual “I can handle myself.”

Everyone clear and ready, Luke punched in 1-1-1-1, and the door whooshed open, cold inside air rushing out. Luke smiled at them both, flipped up his hood, and moved in with Artoo at his side. The door slid shut behind them.

They waited a moment outside, silent, waiting for news from Luke before moving in. Kylo tried to relax, ground himself—a small weed grew out of the cracks in the duracrete, and the city noise soothed, like white noise. Rey worried her lip, and he pretended not to notice her nerves, looking down.

The comlink crackled. “All clear.”

Rey clicked her comlink once to acknowledge and Kylo punched in the code. They blinked in the sudden bright light as they crept inside, keeping quiet, looking into windowed offices and rooms. Inside it was plain hallways, nothing to suggest the horror of sedated captives. It was well-lit, clean, and quiet. No one seemed to be there. It looked almost like a hospital, with medical equipment in some of the rooms. Rey pushed the empty droid through the facility, the grinding wheels the only noise in the corridors.

“Head for the lower level, and north,” Luke’s voice said over the comlink, startling them both. “I’ll meet you down there.”

“Got it,” Rey whispered back.

They descended down a stairwell, using the Force together to lift the heavy prison droid. Even though they didn’t see anyone, and Luke said it was clear, Kylo couldn’t shake a feeling of unease, that they were being watched. He didn’t say anything.  

Luke and Artoo met them in the middle of the basement corridor, the whir of Artoo’s wheels oddly loud in the quiet building. “This way,” he said, and they followed until they reached a clinical-looking round room with white walls and the smell of medicine in the air. Rey gasped, covering her mouth. Kylo clenched his fist around his lightsaber.

Spaced evenly around the room were twelve beds, each containing a sleeping person, many of them the Knights of Ren. He counted six humans and aliens; they were all here, all apparently asleep. Kylo hadn’t seen their faces in years—Snoke hadn’t allowed him to rejoin them in that long. He barely recognized them, with their new scars and wrinkles. Several of them were twenty years older than him or more, one was a year younger. Her face was the most different. He wondered if they would know him by sight, with his older face and his scar.

Each bed was hooked to a complicated system of needles and tubes, just like the interior of the prison droids used to capture them, but with an additional horror—the mouthpiece he had glimpsed in his own vision. He waved for Rey to come help him with one of the older Knights of Ren. Her father, Athair Ren. Kylo only knew it was him from the old burns on his hands.

She didn’t come. She was busy with Finn. Luke was with her. And Artoo. On the other side of the room.

“We’ll get them all out, Ben,” Luke said, right before Kylo could say something. He closed his mouth.

Rey worked quickly, her hands sure even as she spoke to herself in a way that sounded unsure. “I can do this, I can do this…”

Kylo paced, furious. This was happening exactly like he knew it would. Rey only cared about her friend. Luke…he pretended to care, but when it came down to actions, he hadn’t changed at all. He would still let them all die in favor of saving someone else.

Kylo didn’t know what to do. He needed Rey’s help to let them go. He had no idea how to inject the medicine without doing more damage than the slavers had already done, and there was only one set of equipment to do so anyway. Why did the traitor get to be let out first? It wasn’t fair.

“This is taking too long,” Kylo snapped. “We’ll have to move them without reviving them—“

“Can’t,” Rey said tersely. “They’re hooked in just like the people on the ship were, if you move them they could go into shock and die.”

“Maybe they’re better off,” Kylo said.

Rey shot him a look, shook her head, and kept working. _Finn, I have you._

Kylo drew his lightsaber.

Luke drew his. “Don’t do this, Ben. Not now.”

“What are you doing?” Rey bit out through clenched teeth.

“You don’t care about us,” Kylo said to Luke. He moved to slash through the tubes leading to Rey’s father, but Luke deflected his blow with an underhand swing.

“Ben,” Luke said. _He nearly killed Gaheris. I thought he was doing better._ “We’ll get them all out. You aren’t helping matters.”

Kylo stepped away and extinguished the saber, breathing hard. He pointed at Rey with the silent hilt. “She doesn’t intend to help.”

Luke took a deep breath. “I’m sure Rey intends to—“

“There isn’t enough time,” Kylo said. “We have to choose. She’s already chosen. You’ve failed your students yet again.”

Rey looked up from the computer next to Finn, mouth in a thin line. “Your students?”

Luke looked between them. “Ben, Rey, please…” He straightened from his combat stance and put his lightsaber away. “We can get them all out, this isn’t a competition. Rey, please hurry.”

Rey shook her head. “This isn’t right. This isn’t the same compound they were sedated with on the ship. I don’t have what we need.”

Kylo’s chest tightened as he remembered. Just like forgetting to reconnect the communications array and Rey had to remind him. Just like forgetting to input coordinates before taking off. Just like forgetting to restablize the repulsorlifts of the _Northern Sunrise_. He forgot something else, something critical. The captain knew about a second drug, they were kept on a sedative until a “transfer point,” and put on something else. This was the “something else” at the transfer point, and Kylo knew about it, and forgot.

“Artoo, can you find a terminal and see where everyone goes next?” Kylo asked.

Artoo beeped questioningly but did as he asked, plugging into a jack in the wall next to Rey.

Rey looked at him sharply, and he bit his lip, unable to admit his mistake.

“You forgot something again, didn’t you?” she said, voice quavering.

His eyes prickled with hot, frustrated tears. It wasn’t fair. They were so close, everyone they wanted to rescue in the same room, this could be their only chance to get them out, and they were going to fail. Not because of his broken arm like he feared, but his broken mind.

“I forgot something I learned from the captain,” he said, swallowing, and Rey groaned. “They’re kept on the sedative until they’re brought here. They’re on something else here. This is a transfer point, this isn’t the final destination.”

 _Oh, Ben_. Luke looked over Rey’s shoulder at the computer, and turned to Artoo. “There has to be a way to revive them right here in this building. Can you find that too?”

Artoo blatted that he was “only one droid.”

“I’ll look around,” Rey said tersely, and set to going through the cabinets of equipment, items jostling and glass clanking as she tore the room apart.

Kylo felt a warning in the Force and turned to face the door, his lightsaber blazing back to life. A second later, Luke joined him, watching the doorway expectantly. It was empty. Nothing happened.

Artoo shrieked.

“Artoo!” Kylo rushed over to him, but Luke pulled him back as electricity arced, surrounding the droid, making all his compartments and parts spark and pop out, circuits frying. Artoo whimpered and sparked.

“No!” Kylo shouted, but it was too late, the droid went dark, smoking.

He clenched his fist. All the equipment rumbled—glass tubes, the beds, a tray of little tools clanked and trembled. One of Rey’s tools clattered to the ground.

“Calm down, I’ve fixed this before,” Luke said. “It happens sometimes—“

“I don’t care!” Kylo shouted, elbowing him away. 

“Keep it together!” Luke shouted back at him.

He turned away, shoulders heaving, stopping only when his bad arm ached. And then he heard it. A voice both expected and forgotten, like shouting into a chasm and hearing an echo too late, hours later.

_It appears you were correct, my apprentice._

Kylo stiffened. _Supreme leader._

Luke eyed him. “What’s wrong? What’s happening?”

_You were correct in your visions after all. You have great intuition, a great gift._

Kylo shook his head, refusing to look at Luke. “Nothing.”

_I have been keeping an eye on you from afar these past few days._

Kylo bit his lip again, thinking of what the supreme leader must have seen.

_Yes, apprentice, I saw. These Jedi relish in your suffering—they want you weak, drugged so they can, what did they say, “deal with you.” I want you strong. Escape from them, stay hidden on Corellia for a day. I will send you a ship with the personnel and equipment you need. This Republic attack against the Knights of Ren cannot stand._

His heart hammered. He nearly jumped at the sound of equipment crashing to the floor behind him as Rey grew more frustrated in her search.

_They lack the resources to accomplish anything. I will provide what you need. The First Order can accomplish everything that the Republic fails to do. Await my ship, Kylo Ren. I will help you._

Help. Help for his friends, which he didn't know he would get from Rey. But he thought of Luke’s concern, that Snoke knew he was different all along and never told him. _Supreme leader_ , he said. _I learned something about myself on Dathomir._

_It was unfortunate that Skywalker couldn’t protect you from the witches. Yes, I know this. Before I met you I thought I was alone._

He held his breath. _We’re both like this?_

_Come back to me, Kylo Ren, and we will explore the full potential of your mental powers. You belong at my side._

He looked at Artoo, still smoking, completely fried. He didn’t exactly have anyone left here. Yet the thought of mental powers seemed too ironic given his mistake here. _But I can’t_ —he started, and didn’t finish the thought.

_Cannot remember things? Cannot stay present? I assure you once you’re free from Skywalker you will see things more clearly. I hate to see what they have done to you._

But that wasn’t quite right. The gaps in reality, the zoning out had started after his “training” with Snoke. He couldn’t stay present in meetings, couldn’t seem to function there, it just became more obvious when he was outside of the _Finalizer_.

_You did well in your training, my apprentice. You showed more control than I thought you could, and I was very proud. It’s time for you to take your place at my side._

“No!” Luke shouted.

Kylo backed away from him, into the dim hallway. Luke advanced on him, anger burning bright in the Force, no longer a lead cloak but a firestorm, with a hand at his temple. He overheard everything. He pried into his head to hear the conversation, and Kylo hadn’t even noticed, distracted as he was by the call of Snoke. He walked backwards, lightsaber up against the Luke he remembered from years ago.

“Wait!” Rey cried. “I can’t do this alone! Luke! Ben!”

He faltered. She stood alone in the room, Artoo smoldering behind her, equipment and wires dangling limply in her hands.

Luke’s eyes seemed weird and bright. “Are you really going to leave her again?”

He thought of Athair Ren, lying unconscious in the same room where his daughter stood alone and crying. The lengths he had gone through to keep her safe. “I need to protect her.”

“That’s right.” Luke lowered his lightsaber but kept advancing, imposing in his hood and robes. “You can’t do that if you go back to Snoke. Think. He has the same talent as you and he never bothered to tell you. What was he waiting for? He’s destroying you while he throws you little scraps of power, making you think you’re getting something from him. You’re not.”

“But he’s right,” Kylo said. He backed away another step. “You don’t know about it at all. I want—“ He choked on the words. _I want my brain back._ “I want to get better. I can’t protect anyone like this.”

“He did this to you!” Luke shouted, and Kylo flinched. “I heard you say it! He tortured you, he controls everything you do! He took you from us! I won’t let him take you again!”

“You said you were okay with me leaving,” Kylo said, still backing away.

Luke shook his head and held out a hand. “I guess I’m not.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Snoke uses the abuser tactic of "hoovering" to get Kylo to come back: http://outofthefog.website/top-100-trait-blog/2015/11/4/hoovering. Hoovering happens when the abuser is worried you're leaving, and it feels validating, but it isn't a sign that the person has changed or really wants to help.
> 
> Kylo's memory problems are, I think, mostly related to his PTSD and dissociation, but stress alone can cause memory issues. http://www.webmd.com/brain/memory-loss


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Come on, Ben, you don’t want to fight me,” Luke said, voice tight. “You want to come home with us, I know it.”

Kylo ran.

This wasn’t the same as the sparring match—he sensed and could almost _see_ the roiling hate in Luke, years of frustration and buried anger and seclusion and guilt unraveling, cloying, and Kylo thought, for a crazed half-second— _Snoke will be so pleased, I turned Luke Skywalker to the dark side_ —but the thought of Snoke shattered him with doubts, and he could hear Luke screaming at him--  _you’re not getting away_ —

He leapt up the stairs—

And fell, hard, jerked backward by the Force, his good hand taking most of the impact, lightsaber clattering to the ground a few feet away. He sprang upright, but something heavy hit him—Luke, tackling him—they fell--

“Luke!” Rey shouted, and ran to the two men fighting in the hall on the floor. It was a strange fight, with Luke just trying to restrain his younger, stronger, taller nephew while Kylo struggled to escape. She stopped short of them, not sure how to jump in and help.

“You belong with us!” Luke shouted from his midsection, voice muffled.

He lashed out, kicking. “Let me go!”

Luke held on tighter. “I won’t! I love you too much.”

Kylo froze.

When was the last time anyone said they loved him?

“That’s it Ben, calm down,” Luke said.

At Luke’s words, Kylo came to his senses and shouted again, kicking, muscle memory of combat training taking over amidst his shock, and he rolled to try to throw Luke off like he learned—

But Luke expected it and stayed on him, he expected the violent Force shove, and the second and third attempts, he clung tighter and refused to let go—

“You’re lying!” Kylo roared, trying to distract him. “That’s all you do, you’re a liar!” He managed to stand with Luke attached to him, and he kicked, and punched, and shouted.

Luke took the beating without letting him go, pinning him to the wall. Kylo saw his thoughts very vividly—he remembered a time when young Ben threw a tantrum just like this, a squirming mop of black hair and elbows, and he had held him firmly until he calmed down, since Chewie wasn’t there. Chewie was the best at holding him tight until he stopped crying.

This wasn’t a tantrum, this was running for his life. He had to get out, he had to escape, had to save everyone and then go back to the Supreme Leader, where he belonged.

“Come on, Ben, you don’t want to fight me,” Luke said, voice tight. “You want to come home with us, I know it.”

“Let me go!” he screamed. “Let me go, let me go—“

“Haven’t you done enough damage already, Junior?”

He went slack. Rey said that. He stared at her over Luke’s ruffled grey hair.

She looked at up at him, tears falling down her face. “Han said that, right? What was he talking about? When he said that?”

He stared at her, unwilling to think about it or answer, suddenly tired of fighting. Luke kept holding him for a few seconds. _Is it a trick? Is going to run off again?_ But a few more seconds passed in silence and he released him. Kylo straightened, slowly, not looking at either of them.

“Let me look at that,” Rey said to Luke. Kylo wondered how badly he had hurt the older man.

Luke didn’t care about the injuries. “It’s okay,” he said. “You keep trying to find a way to free everyone, I have this.” _He belongs with us._ “Ben? Are you okay?” _Did I hurt him?_

Kylo’s arm clicked painfully. Something came undone in the fight. “Yes.”

“Okay. Good.”

Kylo blinked, confused—which had he answered, the unspoken or the spoken thought? Usually it was second nature to parse them out, pretend not to hear one and engage with the other, he had to hide it his whole life, but it didn’t matter anymore. He didn’t need to lie about this any longer.

“I don’t, though,” Kylo said. He dared to look up through his long hair, not quite meeting Luke’s gaze. Luke’s lip was cut open, and he had a few early bruises on his face that would turn dark and ugly soon.

 _"_ What do you mean?” Luke asked.

“I don’t. Belong with you.”

“You’re just being stubborn.” Luke patted blood from his face with the sleeve of his robe. _Ben. What have I done? I gave in to the dark side_ …a memory washed over Kylo, the dark throne room, Vader taunting, Luke yelling and attacking while the Emperor laughed— _I haven’t changed, all they have to do is threaten my family and I turn_ … “Snoke won’t help you. He’s just trying to control you.”

“But we’re….” Kylo trailed off. He nearly said that he and the Supreme Leader were the same, and they were in one regard. But he had more in common with his uncle than he realized. They were both stronger with the dark side than the light. They were the same.

Maybe he belonged after all.  

“We should help Rey,” Kylo said.

Luke pursed his lips, looking at him with the same expression he used when he knew Artoo had done or was planning something bad. “Ben.”

Kylo summoned his lightsaber and clipped it to his belt before going back into the round room with Rey. “If someone is going to save everyone, it’s Rey.”

Luke sighed and followed him. _He’s not wrong._  

Rey read through data files at a computer, her eyes a little puffy, hands unsteady. “I’m trying to understand what’s being done to them,” she said tersely, without acknowledging their fight any further. “It’s some kind of horrible experiment, I’m not sure I understand this at all. But we’re going to need one of the scientists to do this, I don’t know what to do and I can’t find anything.”

Luke folded his hands in his robes. He would look serene if Kylo couldn’t sense his still-roiling emotions. And if he had less blood on his face. “It’s time to involve authorities. Leia may be able to send a medical team, or negotiate—“ 

“But we’re here now,” Rey argued, gesturing at all their friends, asleep.

Luke considered how to frame his words to Rey. _We tried a subtle rescue attempt but anything else will create a diplomatic nightmare for Leia._ “If this is an action of the Republic, we can’t act in aggression toward them without ramifications.”

“I don’t care,” Rey said. She bit her lip, looking at her friend, helpless and unconscious on his table. “The Republic has hurt you so much, why do you care?”

Luke frowned at her. “Rey, I can’t let the actions of a few who happened to be under the name of the Republic influence my feelings toward the new democracy I helped create. That my sister used to run and now serves in a defensive capacity.”

Tears spilled from Rey’s eyes. “But we’re so close.”

Luke sighed, and Kylo stared at the ground. After the rush of finding everyone, the sudden violence of the fight, the brief hope that Rey could save them all, the silence felt surreal. The quiet hum of the room, their harsh breathing, the noted absence of sounds from all the unconscious people….he wondered if he should try to run again…

 _Ben,_ Rey called.

Kylo looked at Rey.

She pressed her mouth in a firm line. _We can do this. I need you to trust me._

Kylo considered. _I trust you._

Rey swallowed, wiping her eyes and letting out a sob that wasn’t exactly genuine.

“It’s okay, Rey, we’ll ask Leia what to do,” Luke said. He took Rey into his arms in a comforting hug. “We’ll figure this out.”

Rey caught Kylo’s eyes from the hug. _Let’s go along with what he says. Get him and Artoo onboard the ship. And then you have to knock him out._

Kylo stared at her. He fought the absurd urge to laugh, remembering Luke’s worried thoughts on Dathomir after he tortured the slaver captain— _she’s using him to do her dirty work and he’s letting her._ Luke was right. He quashed the faint glimmer of hope that she might eventually join him—join her real family, fight with them, since her own tactics differed so much from Luke’s. He had to settle for this, being used for this mission, he couldn’t raise his expectations for later. That only led to disappointment.

They put the room back together as best they could, collecting their tools, and Luke moved to gather Artoo in his arms to carry him.

“Stop,” Kylo said.

Luke raised an eyebrow.

Kylo lifted Artoo’s still-smoking body from the ground with the Force. “He prefers flying.”

 _I don’t think he cares right now,_ Luke thought, but he didn’t say anything aloud. The group checked the room once more, looking regretfully at their friends, and headed upstairs.

“I can fix him,” Rey said. She smiled up at him, although her face still shone with tears. “I’ll fix him later.”

Would she? Later she would have her friend back. Kylo and Artoo would become lower priorities. Luke made a lot of promises to fix things but so far couldn’t deliver on any of them. He looked at the damage to Artoo’s casing—he half-remembered working on Threepio when he was younger (as a punishment for breaking him), but could he do it himself? Even if he could manage the repairs, would Artoo be the same? He didn’t know. He might never have his friend back.

He looked out at the city as they emerged from the research building, debating again as his doubts resurfaced—Snoke said he would help, but Rey wanted to help, too—he remembered Coronet City, he probably knew it better than Luke and Rey, he could hide in the smuggler areas for a day while Snoke sent the ship. The First Order didn’t have the same political constraints as Luke did. They could actually rescue the Knights.

 _Ready_? Rey asked him.

He didn’t know, but in the absence of an actual decision, he kept following Rey. 

Jessika met them at the bottom of the downed ramp, looking around. “What happened?” she asked. _Luke looks terrible!_

“We need to regroup,” Luke said. He stepped aside and let Kylo and Artoo board first— _make sure he gets on the ship_ —and then followed. “We didn’t have the equipment we need, but we have information—we know their activities are illegal under New Republic law, we can go about this through official channels now.”

Kylo set Artoo down in the galley, next to the food, so Rey wouldn’t forget to fix him.

Luke clapped a hand on his good shoulder, which Kylo shied away from, sending a spike of guilt through Luke _. He doesn’t like touch, I have to stop forgetting._ “We’ll fix him, Ben.”

Kylo couldn’t respond.

Jessika followed them. “So what are we doing? Where are we going?”

 _Do it now_ , Rey said.

Kylo reached out his good hand.

Luke didn’t move away. _He wants to be touched?_ Luke reached out again, slow this time, to gently lay a hand on his shoulder. Kylo returned the gesture, like an awkward distant one-armed hug. Luke’s mind flashed with memory—trying to make the baby in his arms stop crying but he couldn’t—Han laughing— _“Don’t take it so personally, kid, all babies cry….”_

 _Now_ , Rey urged.

Luke smiled up at him, joy at this apparent milestone overshadowing the failure of this mission, and Kylo brushed a shaking hand against Luke’s head, using the Force to send him to sleep.

 _No_ …Luke thought briefly, and collapsed.  

Jessika screamed.

Rey rushed forward to help Kylo catch him.

“What the—“ Jessika helped Rey as Kylo backed away, rubbing his head at the familiar but sudden pressure from that trick. “What the—you—what is happening?”

“We’re going to save everyone,” Rey said. “We can do this. We’re here and we’re going to do this.”

“You’re crazy,” Jessika said. The pilot shook her head but helped Rey with Luke, carrying him through the ship, his robes dragging on the deck. “You’re both crazy.”

They put Luke on one of the cots on the crew quarters and watched him for a moment in silence. He looked terrible--Kylo had hurt him badly during the fight. Blood shone on his nose, lips, and chin.

“It looks like he's dead,” Jessika said.

“He’s fine,” Rey said, too quickly.

“It feels like treason,” Jessika said.

“It’s a change in plans,” Rey said. She looked up at Kylo. “Are you okay? You’re quiet.”

He nodded, although he suddenly saw the vivid memory again—Luke holding the baby— _him_ —his father laughing—

“This is my plan,” Rey said. She showed them her datapad. “I found information on the scientists who run the facility. Here are their addresses. We’re going to find one and make them help us.”

Kylo and Jessika both looked at her in silence for a moment. Jessika’s mind roared with _areyoucrazyshe’scrazyi’mcrazykyloiscrazyandwe’reallgonnadie_.

“Seriously?” Jessika finally said. “This is a Republic world, we can’t just break into someone’s house, kidnap them, and make them do stuff!”

Kylo cleared his throat.

“Oh no,” Jessika said.

“If we get caught,” Kylo said slowly, “we can just say we’re with the First Order.”

“Firstly, you defected, and secondly, it doesn’t matter,” Jessika said. “That would hold up for about ten seconds at our war crimes tribunal. Which we would all have, for kidnapping and coercing Republic civilians, which is a _war crime,_ doesn’t matter what side you’re on. Need I remind you both that the Resistance operates just a tad independently from the Republic? We literally got started because General Organa was impatient with the Republic not taking things seriously? And you’re her son? Do you not see how terribly bad this looks?”

“I didn’t defect, I had permission to leave…” Kylo bit his lip and trailed off.

“Hun, giving the Resistance the First Order’s plans about military activities means you’ve defected,” Jessika said. She made a funny gesture, indicating the four of them in the room, slapping her thigh. “You’re with us now. And this little mission of ours isn’t officially sanctioned by the Resistance, it might interest you to know, we had ‘permission to leave’ too, but we’re rogue. We can’t get caught.”

Kylo didn’t know that. So Rey and Jessika had been sent on this mission just like Poe Dameron had been sent to Jakku—he remembered the pilot mouthing off even though he knew he was about to die, with no rescue forthcoming, he knew the General he so _admired_ would send no help because of the political situation, and Kylo knew what that felt like. His anger at the fact that his mother would do this to Rey and Jessika surprised him.

“What…what First Order plans?” Rey asked.

“Ah.” _Forgot about that._ Jessika looked up at Kylo. “Everything is already terrible, might as well tell her.”

“The First Order was planning an attack on the Resistance base,” Kylo said, not looking at Rey.

Something occurred to him. Was the attack real? Or did Snoke know he might…defect, as Jessika put it? Was it a test? Was that why he only heard from Snoke now after all this time, he waited until he was just about to leave the First Order? If it was a test, would the attack still happen?

“And?” Jessika said impatiently. She rummaged through the medkit and started treating Luke's injuries. “You’re leaving out a key part of the story.” _Sweet as it is to see these two murderfaces working together, this could break it up._

Was Snoke willing to risk the fate of a vital operation to gauge the allegiance of his apprentice? How much did Snoke know from watching him? He never knew for sure and now his skin prickled to think he could be watching right now….

“Go on,” Jessika urged.

Kylo brought his left hand to squeeze his right arm but stopped himself just in time. He gripped his scarf instead. “I knew about the attack but didn’t say anything until this morning.”

Rey sighed. “I don’t--“ she trailed off. Vivid memories came through—Finn, in a crowded bar, _admitting he lied, and it was the least important thing to me in that moment_ — “This isn’t exactly a surprise. You didn’t trust us at first. I didn’t trust you. I do now.”

 _Damn_ , Jessika thought.

“Look, I kept something from you, too,” Rey said.

He tilted his head, waiting. 

Rey plunged ahead. “At first I wasn’t planning to save your friends. You were right. It was too risky, you—well, you’re one Knight of Ren and that’s enough.”

He almost smiled at that, but he remembered the Supreme Leader's words--they wanted to control him, he was too much to deal with, that's what Rey meant. Or was it? 

Rey fidgeted with her hands. “But what you said—they’re Luke’s old students, aren’t they? Everyone who survived the attack.”

He nodded.

Jessika threw her hands up. “Seriously? This is insane.”

“I promise you I will get them all out,” Rey said. “I didn’t understand why Luke thought it was safe to have them come with us but I see it now. I wish he had just told me. You could have said something, too.”

But Rey was all wrong, she shouldn’t trust him, shouldn’t trust any of them, he didn’t fight hard enough for her and he nearly left her all over again, exactly like Luke taunted—he still almost wanted to now but he was confused, and he hated himself—just like how he couldn’t leave the Finalizer without days of thinking about it and finally being pushed out the hanger bay by Hux, he needed someone to tell him what to do…and right now that person happened to be Rey, but it could so easily be Snoke, it nearly was Snoke until Luke made him stop…

Right now Rey stared at Luke a long moment, her mind silent as she rebuilt the wall she so easily put in place to keep him out. Another thing Rey excelled in that Kylo couldn’t manage, not without intense concentration.

Kylo wasn’t even sure the attack was real, and he tried to remember the long meetings and intense planning and intelligence reports to convince himself Hux genuinely had this planned and it wasn’t an invention by the Supreme Leader, another test….“Did the Resistance get the warning?” Kylo asked.

Jessika smiled wearily at him. “Yeah, I talked to the General on a secure channel, they’re packing up shop.”

He nodded, feeling sick at himself, half-hoping some kind of attack happened so he would know he wasn’t completely losing his mind, because was it real or not? Was it a trick?

Everything seemed unreal all of a sudden—Kylo Ren onboard a ship with members of the Resistance, he wasn’t supposed to be there, he was supposed to be on the _Finalizer_ —the soft lights of the crew quarters felt otherworldly, Rey and Jessika talking didn’t sound real, Luke’s sleeping form seemed the most unreal of all, the same feeling that Kylo sometimes felt on a battlefield when he came across a dead body, one that had been there a while with no one else around, the void in the Force where a person should be, horrible stillness shouting that something was wrong, wrong, _wrong_ \---

“I don’t think he’s listening, hun.”

Kylo backed away from Rey as she approached him, right into the bulkhead. Her face was red and exasperated.

He swallowed, realizing he had no idea what she had said for whole minutes, and he was no closer to knowing who he should trust, and he wondered again if the Knights would be better off dead, he could go back in and put them out of their misery and then he could join them—

“Ben, we need to do this,” Rey cut into his haze of unreality again, more urgent, voice almost frantic. “I’m really sorry but there isn’t time for…for whatever this is, I need you to focus.”

A direct order. Focus. Focus for Rey. So simple, but could he manage even that? Nothing felt _real_. He closed his eyes. 

“What’s up, hun?” Jessika asked, talking to him this time.

He liked when Jessika called him “hun.” He clung to the words, let them echo in his mind like a soothing touch on all the broken pieces. _What’s up, hun? What’s up, hun?_

He opened his eyes, calmer. “I don’t know what to do,” he admitted. 

Jessika nodded, while Rey tapped furiously at her datapad. Searching for a target. Kylo could feel her impatience and frustration, probably all his fault. He looked down.

“Hey,” Jessika said. “I don’t think any of us know what to do. For what it’s worth, I’m not even sure about what Luke was saying before you guys knocked him out. It might be bigger than us, but that also means that nothing would happen even if we approached authorities.”

But his own mother asked them to do this without official sanction—“We’re on our own,” Kylo growled.

He also realized he had thrown Luke’s plan out the airlock immediately upon hearing it, not considering it for even a second. Right now he was choosing between three courses of action: Snoke’s plan, to hide and wait for help; Rey’s plan, to take immediate action and free them no matter what; and his own plan—not really a plan, and more a stabbing shadow of thought that wouldn’t go away to _just end it_. It came down to who he trusted the most. He realized this meant he trusted his Uncle Luke even less than he trusted himself.

“Okay,” Jessika said. _I’m so going to regret this._ “We stay rogue and go with Rey’s plan. But we cannot, _cannot_ get caught.”

Kylo bit his lip. Rey’s plan. Snoke’s plan. _Or save them all by killing them all._

“What is that face for?” Jessika asked.

He quashed his own plan—he couldn’t trust himself, it was too extreme. He found he couldn’t talk about Snoke’s plan. They would ridicule him for thinking Snoke could be trusted.

“I don’t know if this will work,” he said.  

“I promise I will get everyone out,” Rey said, speaking up. “It’s the only way. I know Snoke told you he would help—“

Kylo’s heart pounded when she said the Supreme Leader’s name.

"--but he was lying to you,” Rey said.

“Whoa, Snoke?” Jessika said.

Again, his heart almost hurt at the mention of the Supreme Leader, he tried to calm down, stay present, repeating _What's up, hun?_ in his mind. 

“Snoke told him he would help when we were down there,” Rey said. “But you know he won’t, he was lying, you have to see that.”

He bit his lip again, and Jessika sighed heavily, puffing out her cheeks.

“I don’t know. The—“ Kylo tried to say the words “the Supreme Leader” and couldn’t. “He said he would send a ship to rescue the Knights if I go back.”

It felt stupid as the words left his mouth, just like he feared, and they both stared at him. He could hear Jessika ( _Oh hun this is horrible_ ), saw her memories of him a few days ago, shying away from a dessert because he wasn’t allowed.

He was pathetic. 

“He’s lying!” Rey burst out.

“I don’t know that,” he said. But he knew she was right. “And if there’s a chance he’ll save my Knights I need to take it.” That sounded hollow. 

“Yeah, but—“ Jessika rubbed her forehead. “It sounds more like trading yourself in and sacrificing yourself than something you actually want to do.”

“You’re right,” Kylo said.

Jessika had been about to fight him more on this—she closed her mouth and grinned. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

The girls made a plan, pointing to a map of the city, and Kylo helped by telling them what areas had the most security presence from what he remembered, but he kept thinking about what he really wanted. The dark thought that wouldn’t leave him alone.

He realized now that Luke was right about him all along—if he was the same as Supreme Leader, he was nothing but darkness, the worst sort of creature, just like Rey said at first with her good instincts before she changed her mind. The only thing he had in common with his family was a dark streak. Except Kylo Ren wasn’t as good at pretending it wasn’t there.

But he didn’t belong with the Supreme Leader, either. And Jessika was right. He didn’t _want_ to go back.

The dark thought kept coming back to him, rearing up and telling him to end it all. The students of Luke Skywalker all died in the fire nearly fifteen years ago. They were only ever targets, experiments, something to eradicate or control, whether by the Republic or the First Order. Maybe it was time to stop running.

Rey hustled about the ship, setting out a snack for everyone (always so focused on food, she loved food), and checking her weapons. She pushed Kylo to sit down so she could check his bandage, and replaced it swiftly while he stared up at her.

If he killed all the Knights, he had to kill her, too.

Snoke would get her if he didn’t. Luke’s protection meant nothing.

He raised his good hand to his cheek, feeling where his father had touched him before he pushed him off the bridge. Heard his laughter in Luke’s memory _—“Don’t take it so personally, kid.”_

_(“Haven’t you done enough damage already, junior?”)_

He had. He promised himself he would force the dark thought to go away if it came up again. 

“What else do you need me to do?” he asked her.

She smiled down at him, her jaw set in determination.

All the adults in his life had failed to protect them—Snoke, Luke, his father, his mother. It was time to trust the little girl. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been a month since the last update, I'm unfortunately in a self-made "too many WIPs" hell. You can follow my vagueblogging about the progress of this story at pixiestarpilot.tumblr.com
> 
> I love hearing from you guys and talking about this story so definitely feel free to comment or hit me up on tumblr, you guys rock <3


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo felt almost light as they left the ship, feeling the breeze from the outside, hearing the speeder noise from one street over. They were taking action, taking matters into their own hands. It was almost like when he left the Finalizer, liberated yet unsure, but this time, he wasn’t alone.

“Maybe you should have thought for two seconds before knocking our other pilot out,” Jessika grumped.

“He wouldn’t have listened,” Rey said.

Someone needed to stay onboard to pilot the ship in case they needed to take off in a hurry. Rey’s plan depended entirely on Kylo’s abilities, so that meant choosing between Jessika and Rey to stay behind. And Rey did not want to stay behind.

“Look, in a situation like this, I’m just saying it would be nice to have a good cop and a bad cop,” Jessika went on as Rey tried on a breath mask on to hide her face. “With you two it’s bad cop, worse cop.”

“Ben is scarier than I am,” Rey said, her voice muffled from the mask. She strapped her blaster to her side.  

Jessika eyed her outfit. “I’m starting to doubt that, short and sweet.”

Kylo put on a breath mask to make sure it fit, missing his own mask even more than usual, the sense of power he gained from it, the comforting weight and darkness. But something covering his face was better than nothing. He packed the mask in Rey’s bag and secured his blaster in the black clothes he found in the dead slaver co-pilot’s possessions, a little small on him but it would have to do. The dark jacket’s sleeve hung empty at his side, his arm tucked in underneath it. He had practiced his marksmanship with both hands but not enough, and not recently. They decided not to take their lightsabers—too identifying. 

“Let’s all go,” Kylo suggested. He was far stronger with his lightsaber than the blaster. He told himself their need for another competent fighter was the only reason he wanted her along. “We’ll leave a message for Luke telling him what to do.”

 _Oh boy._ “Oh, yeah, he’ll love that and totally do what we say,” Jessika said, rolling her eyes.

“How long will he be asleep?” Rey asked.

“It could be a few hours,” Kylo said.

Rey tied her hair back in a plain ponytail while she spoke. “Can you be more specific?”

He shook his head.

Rey considered. “Luke seems to have done a thorough job taking out the security in the building, and the ship should be safe right here. No one is around.”

“Excellent,” Jessika said. She rubbed her hands together in anticipation. “I get to come along.” _…and stop them from causing **too** much damage to the stability of the entire Republic…._

The three of them recorded a holo message for Luke, dressed in black (the girls both fit into the short dead captain’s clothes almost perfectly) and armed with blasters. Rey ingeniously wired a medical monitor from the medkit to start playing the message when he woke up.

“We’re really sorry,” Rey said to the holo-recorder.

“Are you, though?” Jessika muttered.

Rey scowled and went on. “I’m sorry we tricked you and had to knock you out, but it had to be done because you wouldn’t listen.”

Kylo shifted on his feet. Luke might have heard them out, since the three of them agreed on what to do—that might have been shocking enough to force him to consider their point of view. But he remembered Luke’s insistence that they wait for help on Dathomir when Rey could have worked the equipment just fine on her own. Luke had become a coward in his old age, hiding away and waiting for help when they didn’t need any.

Rey went on, “We’re going to the address in the navicomputer, the home of lead scientist Ekhard Lansgar, and we’ll be back here to get everyone within two hours. When we have everyone safely onboard Ben will remove Lansgar’s memories that we were ever here. We’re not waiting around for someone else to help, we know they won’t. Right, Ben? Jess?”

He nodded.

“Don’t worry, Luke, I’m going with to provide the common sense,” Jessika said. She twirled her blaster and put it in the holster. “What we need from you is to stay put and keep the engines hot. This will be, um, a really delicate situation, so don’t follow us and barge in.” _Oh man. What if he follows us and barges in?_

An idea occurred to Kylo to further assuage Luke when he awoke. “Jessika should be in command. Rey and I are too close to this.”

Rey glanced at him curiously.

“I wasn’t in command already?” Jessika joked. “Yeah, that’s a good idea.”

“That—yes, that’s a good idea,” Rey admitted after a moment. “We’ll listen to her.”

“I know you’re not totally relieved by that but it’s something, right?” Jessika said. “It was even tall and dark’s idea, look at how responsible we all are.”

This message felt like leaving a goodbye note, especially with Luke lying motionless a few feet away. Kylo had to say something, it felt like his last chance. “I’m not going back to Snoke.”

Jessika and Rey looked up at him, and he wondered if he said something wrong. Rey reached for his hand, and he took it after a moment’s hesitation. Her hand was rough. “He knows,” she said. “Come on, let’s go.”

They left the ship secure and sealed, stepping into the cool city air. They could be mistaken for three friends out on the town for a night of fun.

In a way, they were. Kylo felt almost light as they left the ship, feeling the breeze from the outside, hearing the speeder noise from one street over. They were taking action, taking matters into their own hands. It was almost like when he left the _Finalizer_ , liberated yet unsure, but this time, he wasn’t alone. And he knew he could do this.

Kylo Ren was in his element. He knew how to sneak around, how to get around this city, how to extract information and compel someone, especially a vile someone he already had reason to hate. When Rey showed him the picture of their target, Lansgar, an older human man with greying hair and deep wrinkles, he almost felt afraid—probably because this person (who reminded him of an older Hux) thought he could take his Knights, use them.

Jessika led the way, heading down a metal stairway from the landing pad to the street below. “First step in not getting caught is—“

“Act casual,” Kylo said.

“That’s right.” She grinned. “I didn’t think they taught that at Dark Jedi school.”

“Day one,” he said. He wished he could think of a quick quip about what else “Dark Jedi school” might have had, but Jessika laughed anyway at his response.

He pushed away the thought of where he actually learned how to blend with crowds and not attract attention _(“Calm down kid, you’re with me”_ ), and how to navigate Coronet City (“ _What, it’s fine... or would you rather stay on the **Falcon**?”_ ), because if he thought about it the light feeling, his clarity and confidence might fade and that couldn’t happen. He swallowed and looked up at the bright lights of all the nice restaurants and bars, and the flashing advertisements for liquors and seedy establishments. He was good at this, he could do this.

Their ship and the research building felt distant already, only two blocks over. The streets changed character from mild disrepair, drab office buildings, and flickering, cold lights to crisp new construction alongside lovingly preserved Old Republic architecture as they moved into to the brightly-lit and bustling street of nightlife.

He debated trying to hide them all again, like he had tried in the spaceport on Dathomir before Luke interrupted to ask what he was doing. But apart from a few people noticing his scar, he didn’t sense any suspicion from the people around them, so it wasn’t necessary. Still, he wondered how to do it—maybe work Jessika and Rey into his visualization, the one he usually used? He imagined hiding under a table with Jessika and Rey as kids—and stopped, because he knew exactly what Rey looked like as a kid, and he couldn’t think about that right now.

Kylo couldn’t think about a lot of things. Not without sacrificing the safety of Rey, Jessika, and everyone they hoped to rescue. Maybe it was a gift after all, being able to hear everything—he didn’t have to work to distract himself, other people managed that for him.

Thoughts washed through him, mostly young people like them out having fun for the night, day workers, a lot of repetitive drunk thoughts, some stressed hustlers and thieves—

A pickpocket!

A Rodian, shifty and quick, watched them from under the awning of a shop they were fast approaching.

“Rey,” he said in a low voice, “watch out for that Rodian, he—“

The Rodian man emerged and started talking to her, saying she dropped her purse.

“I don’t think I did—“ Rey looked behind her, stopping exactly like the Rodian intended.

 _She went for it, oh boy._ Jessika pulled Rey forward, jogging a few steps to get past him. “That’s an old trick, love. They make you stop and then they take your stuff. It’s harder to take your things if you’re moving.”

Kylo glared at him over his shoulder, and the Rodian disappeared into the shadows with a scared gurgle.

“I didn’t know,” Rey said, blushing. “Sorry, you were just trying to warn me.”

They made their way through the crowd, heading for the public transport to go to Newtown Park, a neighborhood on the edge of the city. A rich neighborhood with little police presence besides an easily crossed perimeter, home to Lansgar. A transport pulled in and crowds of people surged out, mostly human, laughing and debating about which restaurant to visit. Kylo wondered what it would be like for that to be the biggest concern in his life. He also felt jealous, not quite for himself, he couldn’t eat anything there anyway (or could he?)—they didn’t deserve it, all these people, but Rey did. Rey thought onboard ship rations were tasty, what would she think of food from a restaurant in Coronet City?

“Come on, tall and spacey,” Jessika said. She waved for him to follow her. He gripped his scarf, feeling the soft texture—he kept getting lost in a mix of other people’s thoughts and his own.

The three of them boarded the transport car and stood in a circle, holding on to a pole and swaying as the car shot forward. A few feet away a girl (who wasn’t supposed to be drunk and was worried about going home to her strict parents) stumbled, and her friends laughed, helping her stand upright. Jessika snorted in laughter as they ran around making lewd jokes with each other.

Kylo felt jealous again. They were so normal, those friends, they had homes and friends and normal lives and they were headed to the next bar, not to confront an evil scientist…that’s all Kylo’s life had ever been, confrontation and running, sometimes fighting with the Knights, sometimes with the First Order, and now with Rey and Jessika. He held his scarf, fending off the hazy unreal feeling—at least he was getting better at recognizing it.

He missed Artoo. He swallowed, trying to bury the sudden feeling, he couldn’t think about it, but he really wanted the little droid at his side. He would probably make fun of the group of girls running through the transport, or tell some outrageous story about a time he went to a bar...

“Ben, can I ask you something?” Rey asked. It was so loud with the shouts and laughter of drunk people that they could talk without anyone overhearing. “I’m not used to all these people, but for you it has to be even worse. Is it…loud?”

“Yes,” he said.

She waited for more, and he added, “It used to bother me. I got used to it.”

She frowned. “You mean you…switch it off?”

“No.” He looked away, watching the nearby group of young friends again. He didn’t like talking about this—he was used to hiding it, not discussing it freely. Besides, it was embarrassing how he still couldn’t block people without heavy concentration, especially considering all the other things he had taught himself to do with the Force—it didn’t make sense that manipulating light energy or knocking someone unconscious was easier than something that should be like plugging his ears. It never did make sense and now Kylo feared he would never learn an easy way to do it, since he couldn’t go back to Snoke. Rey seemed to pick up on his discomfort and let it go.

The transport emptied as they journeyed through neighborhoods farther from the city center. They stepped off the car at Newtown Park, onto a raised platform overlooking a small business district lit with soft lights around a café and cheerful bar with a live band of Bith musicians. This neighborhood, a little outside of the tall buildings of the city center, had _trees_ with a whisper of wind through the leaves, making this place seem calm and tranquil, not like home to someone who captured and tortured their friends.

“Something just occurred to me,” Rey said. They walked in a group, jogging down rusty metal stairs from the platform to the street. “How are we supposed to get Lansgar onto the transport? We don’t have another way to get back, and even with us controlling him it will look strange.”

“Big fancy heads of research facilities don’t take the public transports,” Jessika said. They walked briskly, leaving the soft inviting lights of the café in the neighborhood square and heading into the darker, quieter residential area. “This guy will have his own private speeder, it’s a rich person thing.”

Kylo sensed sudden strong emotions from Rey and glanced at her. Even in the low light from sparse streetlamps, he could see her bite her lip, upset but not saying anything.

They walked right past security droids—somehow the three of them looked like they belonged—and passed old Imperial-style apartment buildings, and Imperial-style homes. It almost looked like an old military base that was incorporated into a pleasant city, where the Stormtroopers would have stayed and the officers would have lived.

Rey still felt clouded, not like her usual self.

“Is—“ Kylo started to ask if something was wrong, but stopped. He didn’t want to upset her further, they were almost to Lansgar’s personal residence.

“Is what?” Rey said, almost snapping at him.

“Are you okay?” he plunged ahead.

Her brows knitted together and she glared up at him. He shouldn’t have said anything. “Yeah.”

 _Awkward social disasters the both of them, we’ll work on it_ , Jessika thought. “Okay guys, we absolutely belong here and we’re just going behind this decorative bush, totally casual….”

They followed her lead, disappearing into the dark bushes, and Jessika said, “Let’s suit up.”

Kylo pulled his mask on and shifted his scarf up to drape around his head. The neighborhood slept on as they readied themselves, quiet except for summer insects chirping and the distant sound of speeders. Rey pulled out a multitool, working at the security panel to disable any lights or alarms or cameras. Kylo concentrated, checking their surroundings for alarmed minds, but he sensed nothing—except for their own racing heartbeats, and Jessika’s mental litany of _I can’t believe I agreed to this_.

“All clear,” Rey said, slipping her multitool into her backpack just like Jessika had twirled her blaster earlier.

 _Hope this is the right thing, I can't believe I agreed to this,_  Jessika thought as she looked at Lansgar’s home. It was simple, in that concrete Imperial style, but grand, lined with perfectly landscaped gardens and a rock wall fence that Kylo and Rey hopped over easily.

“Guys,” Jessika complained over the comm. 

Rey made a little “oops!” face, and Kylo jumped back over to help the pilot. He offered a hand on his knee so she could clamber up. Rey helped her down on the other side.

“Thanks,” Jessika huffed and brushed herself off. They crouched behind a landscaped row of bushes.“Rey, you’re small—“

Rey snorted. “Thanks.”

“--you check the perimeter.”

“Right,” Rey said. She hesitated. “You mean make sure it’s locked and no one else is here?”

 _I forget she has like zero training…._ Jessika nodded. “Right. We don’t want any surprises when we’re inside.”

While Rey sprinted off to look around, Kylo seethed inwardly, looking at the gardens around the home and listening to the soothing night sounds. How dare Lansgar go to work, torture his friends, and come home to this ostentatious and tranquil place. This was the sort of home ~~Lando~~ always went on about, once he found “the big score.”

Rey joined them, coming from the other side of the house. “All clear.”

Jessika led them around the back, where they stopped in the doorway, protected by the darkness offered by the trees. “Who’s good at picking locks?” she asked.

Rey brought out her multitool again with a grin and went at the door.

 _It’s all fun and games until somebody starts a civil war_ , Jessika thought.

Kylo had a feeling the "fun and games" were over. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *winces* My friends, I'm really sorry how long this took. Originally this was just the beginning of the chapter but I decided to post the "fun and games" alone because we all deserve it. 
> 
> As always I love hearing from you, even a short "fuck snoke" comment is deeply appreciated.
> 
> Feel free to hang out with me on tumblr, sadaboutstarwars.tumblr.com.


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